District operations response to COVID-19: Learnings so far

As we all continue to adjust to the new reality presented by Covid-19, our team is consistently amazed at how resilient our district partners are. Whether it is making sure people have access to meals or finding creative ways to deliver instruction to students, our districts have not faltered on their commitment to the communities they serve.

After the many conversations we are having with our district partners, our CEO, Sarah, has penned a letter below highlighting some of the trends and best practices we’ve gathered. If you're doing something great that you want to share, please tell us about it. We love to spread the word on what's working!

Hi everyone,

Over the last two weeks, my team and I have reached out and heard from many of you about emergency needs for students and staff.

Some of you are holding down the fort as part of a skeleton crew. Some of you are meeting constantly with all hands on board until the dust settles. Some of you are the last person standing in central office. I know you are all working tirelessly to meet new demands that seem to appear by the minute. 

Amidst this chaos, we are seeing emerging trends and best practices that I’d like to share with you: 

Downloading data to proactively cancel trips, conferences, vendors, and vacation/leave requests 

• For those of you with travel conference, leave, reimbursement and other like workflows on our system, the gif below and this link will show you how to get your data or chat us

Reasonable assurance now, Contracts next

• Many of you have contacted us to get these (and letters of intent) out electronically for signature by April 1, our support team is on extra standby to help and can typically send everything out in 30 minutes or less

Emergency contacts for payroll and Staffing notifications for high risk employees over 65

• If you are concerned that paychecks or important messages might get sent to the wrong place we have templates that can be prefilled with data you already have (works for student data too)

Equipment leases and Acceptable use, Inter and Intra transfer forms

• Students may have to move now based on where they can find safe long-term housing
• If you are increasing devices / media usage for employees and students, we are seeing many different policy sign-offs and communications for protection against risk or loss

Finding a new normal for IEPs 

• Teams are deciding to either hold off or prepare for IEP meetings to become virtual (needing parent consent), some of you are allocating more for paraprofessionals or moving to 1:1 meetings to provide added support

Begin tracking pay vouchers, timesheets, budget transfers, extra time and expenses associated with COVID-19 for potential reimbursement later…(more on this to come)

At this point it’s impossible to know when we will all return. Some are planning for a few weeks and others through the end of this school year. As we learn how to address this new paradigm for working remotely, I will follow up with another message highlighting topics that have been top mind to see which might be best for upcoming webinars and discussions we plan to facilitate. 

No matter how time sensitive or urgent, please let us know how we can assist by reaching out to your customer success manager or your partnerships director, or reply to me directly through this email. 

I speak on behalf of our entire team when I say thank you for everything you do. It’s an honor and pleasure to serve you. 

Sarah Chou

CEO / Co Founder 

Informed K12