Streamlined Communication for COVID-19 Response

Challenges Faced

Like many schools throughout the country, Zeeland Public Schools in Michigan was affected by the national spread of COVID-19. Due to safety precautions and federal, state, and local mandates related to the pandemic, Zeeland Public Schools closed for an indefinite period of time. This meant that students would not have access to food services.

With over 20% of students in the district relying on some of their meals through the district's food services, Zeeland Public Schools explored how to assist the members of the community with the unexpected shortage of food for students.

 

Proposed Solution

The district made the decision to have the transportation department deliver meals three days a week through the standard elementary school bus routes. By utilizing the CrisisGo alerting and communication platform to
coordinate their response effort, Zeeland Public Schools was able to:

• Push out an immediate notice to bus drivers.
• Check the availability of staff and communicate.
• Coordinate a plan for delivering food to students in need.

By using CrisisGo, an AWS Advanced Technology Partner, Zeeland Public Schools’ platform runs on Amazon Web Services, which ensures the most reliable, secure, and redundant connection possible for school safety needs.

Outcomes

David Meeuwsen, Director of Transportation for Zeeland Public Schools informed that without CrisisGo, it would have been difficult to communicate directly with transportation staff to find the drivers needed to deliver the meals to the students in need. Using CrisisGo, the district was able to easily send out a quick notice to all the bus drivers asking for help.

According to Meeuwsen, the district was able to use CrisisGo to receive direct responses for bus driver availability, and they were able to quickly coordinate plan to service their students. He informed that they started the process on Friday and had over 800 meals provided to students by Monday afternoon. Meeuwsen stated, "We appreciate the functionality of CrisisGo during this national emergency, and we look forward to using it a lot more in the future."