News & Updates from the REMS TA Center, Spring 2020 |
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News & Updates From the REMS TA Center, Spring 2020
The U.S. Department of Education (ED), Office of Safe and Supportive Schools and its REMS TA Center would like to express gratitude to education agency leaders, essential staff, community partners, and other key stakeholders who have stepped up this spring in response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. From your efforts to redesign protocols to ensure the safety of essential staff to the extensive work done to ensure continuity of teaching, learning, feeding, and food distribution, we applaud and appreciate you. If you need technical assistance support at this time, please do not hesitate to contact us at info@remstacenter.org or via phone at 1-855-781-REMS [7367]. We also encourage you to visit our COVID-19 Web page to access newly released resources developed by the REMS TA Center and other Federal and national partners to support response and recovery efforts.
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Topical Resource Feature This section of our newsletter features resources relevant to seasonal trends, current events, and other timely topics in the field.
Accessing Funds via the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act
Curious about your state’s allocation for the ESSER Fund? Download, view, and share this ESSER Fund overview document created by ED.
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Functional Resource Feature This section of our newsletter features resources that can support education agencies and their community partners with efforts to strengthen emergency management functions and overall preparedness capacity.
Strengthening Continuity of Operations Planning (COOP) in the Face of COVID-19
Since schools are a subset of the community and because school systems often play key roles in community preparedness plans, especially response and recovery initiatives, effective COOP planning for schools is done in collaboration with community partners. As a part of COVID-19 planning, it is recommended that school planning teams create or update their COOP Annexes. Find a few action items below:
Learn more about this topic via our related Ensuring Continuity of Operations and Learning During and After Emergency Incidents Web page. |
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Help Desk Request Snapshot This section of our newsletter highlights a noteworthy topic among technical assistance inquiries received from the field during the last quarter.
COVID-19 Response, Digital Learning, and Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity and cyber safety are shared responsibilities of students, parents, and school personnel, especially as more students across the country are learning in the “school at home” setting. Cyber threats can impact either the human (students, teachers, and staff) or the physical or virtual (e.g., information technology [IT] networks and systems) elements of schools and school districts. While there may be some overlap in addressing human versus physical/virtual threats, preparing for each type can require input from different individuals with experience or expertise on that topic and unique actions before, during, and after an incident. Schools may therefore choose to plan for these threats separately, but still under a broader umbrella of cyber threats. When discussing the topic of protecting student privacy in the school at home setting, it is important to understand the variety of cyber threat types that can weaken school and school district networks and systems, including data breaches, spoofing/phishing, malware/scareware, unpatched or outdated software vulnerabilities, and use of removable media. (Access a list of common threat types here.) Schools and school districts can take a variety of actions to prevent, protect from, mitigate the effects of, respond to, and recover from cyber threats they may face and that may threaten student privacy. These can be conducted before, during, and after an incident. Find a sample list of recommendations below but note that it is not all-inclusive:
Learn more about this topic via our Addressing Adversarial- and Human-Caused Threats that May Impact Students, Staff, and Visitors Web page. |
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#REMSontheRoad Spotlight This section of our newsletter features details specific to the REMS TA Center Training by Request and #REMSontheRoad Program. The REMS TA Center has temporarily suspended travel as a part of our #REMSontheRoad live training program. However, we are still accepting host applications via our Training by Request Web page for trainings to be scheduled during later dates in the calendar year. We also encourage you to visit the Trainings tab on our Website to access the variety of additional training types we offer, including Webinars, specialized training packages, and online courses. |
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Virtual Networking Corner This section of our newsletter features highlights from our interactions with the field via Twitter, the Community of Practice, and other virtual events and networking platforms.
Upcoming Web Chats
Follow @remstacenter to get the latest updates on this Twitter chat series, and also follow the #SchoolSafetyAtHome and #COOPTeachandLearn hashtags.
Archived Webinars and Web Chats
Top @remstacenter Tweets for the Quarter
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