2021 Conference: Christin Kinman Presents “One School System’s Experience in Re-Opening, On-Time and In-Person During COVID: Lessons Learned, Best Practices, and Evidence for Re-Opening using a Public Health Framework”

Safely re-opening schools in the era of COVID-19 is a topic fraught with much controversy, anxiety, and competing perspectives and objectives. In this presentation, Christin Kinman from the Archdiocese of Baltimore will share her experiences and lessons learned from re-opening on-time and in person with a virtual model option to accommodate all students. Using the public health framework of Haddon’s Matrix, a model developed first for injury prevention that has migrated across disciplines, this talk will walk all administrators, faculty, SROs, and district level staff through the multiple stages of re-opening, physical and social mitigation strategies implemented, and data from the first year of operating under COVID restrictions. Topics that will be addressed and covered include implementation of physical measures (facility related) for mitigation, implementation of social measures for interaction, including new ways to interact and interface given the need for social distancing and separation, communication with stakeholders – including survey results from parents, teachers, and administrators completed over the summer of 2020, on-going communication with stakeholders over the course of the school year, decision making for dealing with positive contacts, close contacts, quarantine and self-isolation, and when to “flip” a classroom or school, data on total number of cases on system level and by school level, perceptions of key constituents at the end of the year.

At the end of this presentation, attendees will be able to (1) name and address physical mitigation strategies used for facilities to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, (2) name and address social and environmental strategies to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, (3) understand the importance of on-going communications with stakeholders and the development of a shared understanding and commitment to work collaboratively to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and (4) understand lessons learned from re-opening to develop a framework for re-opening at each participant’s location.

Christin Kinman, MPH graduated from The Catholic University of America with a degree in civil engineering.  She worked in the Washington, DC area for several large general contractors and then shifted her interest to the intersection of health and the built environment.  In 2011, she received her Masters of Public Health from West Virginia University and upon graduation, took a job in clinical research program management at the National Study Center for Trauma and EMS at the University of Maryland.  After five years of working on NIH, SAMSHA, and multiple military funded studies, she took a job at the Archdiocese of Baltimore, working in Facilities and Real Estate, where she supports over fifty churches and forty-five schools.  In the last several years, school safety and security became a passion for her and she obtained CPTED certification.  In conjunction with partners at DHS and the local level, she works with schools and parishes to do vulnerability assessments and to develop plans for physical infrastructure improvements to improve security and internal security processes.  During the COVID 19 pandemic, she worked closely with the Department of Catholic Schools on school reopening plans, specifically developing layered mitigation strategies to ensure the health and safety for faculty, staff, and students.

Education Administrators, Teachers, School Psychologists/Guidance Counselors, School Resource Officers (SROs), Law Enforcement, Local/State Emergency Managers, Fusion Center Analysts, Crisis Intervention Units, Counselors & Mental Health Specialists, School Social Workers, School Safety Professionals, and other school safety stakeholders interested in attending Christin Kinman’s presentation should register for the July 2021 MCSS School Safety Summer Conference at http://conference2021.safeschoolsmd.org/.