LA Unified rallies partners to build COVID-19 tracking app and accelerate getting kids back to school

“From the moment we first closed our schools, we knew that bringing students and staff back safely was going to be of paramount importance,” says Austin Beutner, Superintendent for the Los Angeles Unified School District. “Our challenge has been to juggle the learning needs of students, the health and safety of the school community, and the working needs of families.” 

In March 2020, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) closed all of its schools in response to the spread of COVID-19. Administrators and teachers pivoted quickly to focus on delivering high-quality remote education—including providing a computer and internet access to more than half a million students who didn’t have them before the pandemic. At the same time, LAUSD began planning for an eventual reopening. 

“We know that the best learning happens in a school setting,” says Beutner. “We’ve seen heroic efforts by teachers and staff to make online learning as rich as possible, but we also know that some students are struggling—early learners, students learning English, and students with disabilities, for example. We need students back in classrooms as soon as possible and as safely as possible.” 

While academic classes are a crucial part of what schools provide, for many students, the benefits of being in school go beyond that. LAUSD serves 650,000 students, and more than 80 percent of them live below the poverty line, so school may also represent safety, healthy meals, and even heat in the winter. Research has shown that those who live below the poverty line are at higher risk for COVID-19 infection and tend to be underserved by healthcare resources. 

“COVID-19 represents a healthcare crisis and an economic crisis all rolled into one,” says Arne Duncan, Former United States Secretary of Education. “Our most marginalized, disadvantaged, and vulnerable communities and families get hit first, get hit hardest, and the impact lasts the longest. So we want to make sure we do anything we can to get those students back to school where they can continue to learn.”

Safe steps to get kids back to safe schools

In addition to its 650,000 students, LAUSD has 75,000 employees at 1,400 schools spread across 700 square miles, so any effort to reopen safely is a major undertaking. LAUSD knew that it couldn’t do this alone, so it brought in a consortium of partners to help develop strategies and implement a plan. This consortium included technology provider Microsoft, along with infectious disease and epidemiology experts from Stanford University, UCLA, The Johns Hopkins University, and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. LAUSD also enlisted Health Net and Anthem Blue Cross, who provide insurance to district employees and many of the students’ families, and SummerBio, an innovative biotech startup working to develop fast and accurate COVID-19 tests.

“None of us can do this alone,” says Duncan. “The only way we can possibly get kids back to school safely is to put our egos aside, roll up our sleeves, and find ways to work together for a solution. This is a life-and-death issue, and we don’t want to be constantly opening, closing, and reopening schools. We need to get it right. Including a partner like Microsoft—with expertise not just in technology but also in planning, processes, and communications—helps pull everything together.” 

Along with its partners, LAUSD developed a plan called “Safe Steps to Safe Schools.” The plan uses a Daily Pass app, developed by Microsoft with significant input from LAUSD, to help coordinate and monitor testing for staff, students, and their families. Everyone who wants to enter one of the district’s schools must use the app to answer a series of symptom evaluation questions and confirm a recent negative COVID-19 test. If someone doesn’t have a recent test result, the app helps them book a convenient appointment at a testing location that provides overnight results.

“Scientists tell us that if we can test everyone in the school system at least once a week, we’re meaningfully lowering our risk,” explains Beutner. “If someone gets a positive result today, we can keep them out of school tomorrow, giving us an effective real-time response. The app also provides dashboards and analytics that can be used for contact tracing and situation monitoring.”

Access to real-time data and analytics helps LAUSD make intelligent, informed decisions not only about keeping individual students home if they’re sick but also about handling more complex scenarios. “Having an information system that is accessible and easy to use underpins our entire testing and tracing system,” says Beutner. “It informs how we communicate to our schools and allows us to respond to this ever-changing situation in a way that has a meaningful impact in terms of mitigating the spread of disease.”

Because of the sensitive nature of the information, privacy and security were important considerations. “Each series of protocols was carefully examined by the engineers who built the system and by lawyers and health experts to make sure we respect the rights of every individual and comply with applicable laws,” says Beutner. “There is a set of very circumscribed information used by contact tracers, and no one other than the individual and their family and other authorized parties will know they tested positive.”

Microsoft designed the Daily Pass app to be free, easy to use in multiple languages, and accessible from any sort of computer or mobile device so that there’s no barrier for entry. A student, staff member, or visitor who completes the steps in the app receives a QR code and gets it scanned by a greeter at the school to gain admission. 

Although the immediate goal for the app is to use it to safely reopen schools while COVID-19 is still a concern, the consortium believes that there will be other uses in the future. “We’re really building a platform for the digital future of the district,” says Eran Megiddo, Corporate Vice President, Modern Life and Learning at Microsoft. “We hope the app will help with dispensing and tracking vaccinations and with the delivery of health services and learning services moving forward. It’s a unique and comprehensive vision.”

A model for school districts across the country

The Daily Pass app is one part of the district’s plan, but it isn’t a complete solution by itself. Schools still need to use personal protective equipment (PPE), practice social distancing, and provide thorough cleaning of facilities. But LAUSD is proud of the efforts that the district and its partners have made to provide a technological pathway to safely reopening schools. The members of the team expect that what they have done in Los Angeles can help others do the same.

“We believe we are testing as efficiently and cost effectively as any organization in the country,” says Beutner. “We built a scalable information system, so we can report the information for a thousand people or a hundred thousand people or a million people. We think it’s a model not just for other school districts in California, but for the nation as a whole.”

For Esther Hatch, parent of a San Pedro High School student, the district’s plan provides much-needed peace of mind. “I’m really grateful for LAUSD’s testing program, which my son and I have both used,” she says. “I believe that with the LAUSD program, my son will be back to school as soon as possible and as safely as possible. I have confidence that the testing and tracing protocols will reduce risk and get him into the classroom where he can learn to his fullest potential and strengthen the social connections that are so important for kids.”

LAUSD is a vital part of the greater Los Angeles community, so everything that the district does to keep students safe has a much broader impact. “We have one high school with about 3,000 students and staff members,” says Beutner. “If you look at the web of connections over a 24- to 48-hour period, those 3,000 individuals ultimately affect another 100,000 people. Multiply that across the whole district, and you’ll see that we’re not just serving our students and staff, we’re serving all of Los Angeles.”

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