Covid-19 Testing in K-12 Settings: A Playbook for Educators and Leaders

This playbook is designed to offer detailed, step-by-step guidance to help educators, leaders and their public health partners design and implement effective testing programs in schools. Informed by experiences from over 90 school district and public health leaders as well as a wide-range of research, evidence, and expert insights, the Playbook addresses the operational challenges and every-day realities of implementing a complex, logistical program in an easy-to-understand, practical guide. This includes:

• Identifying partners: How to engage local public health authorities, healthcare providers, state and local governments, and community organizations to help inform testing strategy and secure additional staff and financial resources.
• Designing a testing program: How to conduct a rigorous risk assessment to understand the likelihood of SARS-CoV-2 being introduced into the school environment and how it spreads, how to design a testing program based on the metrics to achieve and the risk of transmission in schools at the time, how to pick the right type of test that is most effective and feasible, and who and when to test.
• Considerations for launching a program: How to collect consent, considerations for working with testing vendors and setting up a testing sites, staffing needs, estimates on equipment and supply needs, logistics for sending samples to the labs and receiving results, guidance on how to report results and communicate to build trust before and during the testing program, operational workflows, and data management, privacy, and security.

The Playbook is developed in partnership with Testing for America, a nonprofit dedicated to helping organizations reopen safely with expanded Covid-19 testing, and supported by the Skoll Foundation through the RF Catalytic Capital, Inc. (RFCC), the Foundation’s public charity.