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Last spring, as President Joe Biden urged states to prioritize COVID-19 vaccinations for teachers, a new Johns Hopkins tracking tool revealed the massive disconnect between that priority and states’ actual school reopening plans.

The eSchool+ Teacher & School Staff COVID-19 Vaccination Dashboard provides state-by-state information on reopening status, teacher vaccination policies, and other vital data—including if a state is monitoring uptake of vaccines by teachers and school staff as well as acceptance and refusal rates—data that is not currently being tracked anywhere else.

That information really matters to school families, says Annette C. Anderson, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Safe and Healthy Schools and co-founder of the eSchool+ Initiative, a collaboration between the Johns Hopkins Consortium for School-Based Health Solutions, Berman Institute of Bioethics, and schools of Education, Medicine, and Public Health.

“While many well-resourced parents are trusting the reopening process, other families are saying, ‘We’re not sure our children will be safe in schools,’” says Anderson. “This dashboard provides data that can help rebuild trust among all families and play an important role in having children back in schools.”

The eSchool+ Initiative has built a suite of datasets that provide educators with detailed information on how school districts have responded to pandemic-related issues. In partnership with the World Bank and UNICEF, it also recently launched the COVID-19 Global Education Recovery Tracker, which monitors the pandemic’s impact on response and recovery for students around the world.

This dashboard provides data that can help rebuild trust among all families and play an important role in having children back in schools.

Annette C. Anderson, PhD Deputy director, Johns Hopkins Center for Safe and Healthy Schools, Co-founder, eSchool+ Initiative

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