As noted above, campus closure (partial or complete) following screening detection or positive cases would be decided by the Campus Reopening Committee and the Senior Staff at the College in consultation with the Chancellery/COO’s Office, local and state departments of health, following CDC guidelines and in response to positive cases or outbreaks in our community, or in response to NYS or CUNY BOT mandates. Circumstances such as extensive numbers of positive cases (e.g., 5% of screening responses that prohibit campus access) spreading across multiple areas of the campus or rapidly increasing rates (e.g., 1% daily increase over multiple days) would likely trigger such a reversal. CUNY guidelines regarding campus closure metrics and decision-making are below.
4. B: Campus Closure Guidance
The Chancellery/COO’s Office and Campus Reopening Committee will monitor numerous criteria to assess whether a campus ramp down or closure is required.
External monitoring criteria should include:
- Federal, New York State, and New York City regulatory guidelines and mandates
- Infection/health system status at the local, state, regional and nation-wide level
- Status of resources and infrastructure to combat contagion (e.g., PPE, health system capacity, testing and tracing)
- Compliance of greater public with COVID-19 protocols (e.g., group gatherings, social distancing)
- Reclosing status of neighboring universities
Internal monitoring criteria should include:
- Spread of infection on campus (i.e., via data reported by our Campus Coronavirus Liaison
- metrics on current caseload, new flu-like symptoms, spread)
- Status of resources and infrastructure to combat contagion on campus (e.g., College/CUNY health system capacity; PPE, testing & tracing availability)
In addition, the College will incorporate guidance on relevant re-closure criteria provided by New York State as part of NY Forward guidance for Higher Education institutions. Our internal monitoring will be informed by the requirement for campus visitors to self-diagnose/report symptoms and faculty, staff and students coming to campus to complete the daily health screening (Everbridge Solution), as well as the regular reports on COVID-19 exposures at the college that will be provided by the College’s Coronavirus Liaison to the Campus Reopening Committee and the Senior Staff of the College.
The College is required to monitor health conditions using the criteria above and look for warning signs that infection may be increasing. The College’s Coronavirus Liaison has primary responsibility for collecting accurate and complete data about each individual for possible exposure to the coronavirus and for sharing that information with the Campus Reopening Committee, and for reporting information from our campus as well as the online screening. The College’s Campus Reopening Committee will actively monitor the situation on campus.
Since Guttman is a one-building campus, all outbreaks of COVID-19 on campus will require the complete shutting down of the building/campus for cleaning and disinfection.
In the early phases of the outbreak, New York City experienced substantial community transmission in which individuals who had no known contact with infected individuals tested positive for the virus. Should there be a return of substantial community transmission, the campus community –students, faculty and staff– should act as if they have been exposed, and staying home and monitoring for symptoms. This would require a ramp down or shutdown of CUNY buildings and/or campuses to ensure CUNY does its part to protect the most vulnerable members of the community (March 20, 2020 letter from Chancellor). Such decisions will be made in consultation with the Chancellery/COO’s Office and local/State officials.
The ramp-down response to the local and community health situation within the College, a community or the City as a whole, should be made following the governance process set out in Part 1, Section B, of the CUNY Guidelines for Safe Campus Reopening. Final decisions on shutting down the Guttman campus, or multiple CUNY campuses, as appropriate, will be made by the Chancellery/COO’s Office in consultation with Local/State authorities.
The reopening plan for the CUNY campuses proposes four phases, moving from a soft reopening to full operations as described in the Phasing Section of the CUNY Guidelines for Safe Campus Reopening.
Depending on which phase of reopening CUNY is in, closure of campus may involve reverse engineering to lower phases, up to and including a total shutdown.
The College will implement plans and procedures to be ready to close campus in the event of a resurgence of the virus, and return to essential service and workforce restrictions.
The College or CUNY Central should expect to move forward and backward between the above phases, and to respond with targeted shutdowns of impacted buildings/areas if a person with COVID-19 is confirmed to have been on campus, to clean/disinfect/contact trace in consultation with local health officials.
The College will make a checklist of tasks that stopped during the previous shutdown in order to reverse engineer the closing and be prepared for any future campus-wide closings.
Guttman Community College is ready to deploy distance learning modalities with as few employees on campus as possible, to instruct only those who have been designated as essential staff to report to work, and to transition to distance working for all non-essential staff (March 15, 2020 letter from Chancellor).
This should include readiness to deploy targeted distance learning modalities if necessary due to the shutdown of the campus since it is impacted in its entirety by a COVID-19 outbreak.
The College has effective approval processes to enable staff to request supervisor approval for telecommuting, in accordance with campus telecommuting policies (March 15, 2020 letter from Chancellor).
This includes targeted use of telecommuting if necessary due to targeted shutdown of campus.
All supervisors will maintain structures and channels that will enable employees to do their jobs remotely, and to ensure that all hardware and software is fully functional (March 15, 2020 letter from Chancellor)
Supervisors will implement remote check-in plans, and all employees should receive details about their work schedules and other expectations of job performance for the duration of the arrangement (March 15, 2020 letter from Chancellor).
The College has a communications plan in place to address questions from students, faculty and staff.
In the event of a campus-wide shut down or a targeted shutdown of particular areas on a campus, only those previously identified as essential, in their job descriptions, will report to campus.
- Managers of College staff who are not able to remotely perform all of their job duties should look for ways to minimize everyone’s potential exposure, including: where possible, combining remote and on-premises work; staggering schedules to enable employees to use public transit during off-peak times; implementing staffing rotations; condensing work weeks, with more hours but fewer days as during the summer; and, for those who are working on-site, utilizing stringent social-distance strategies (March 15, 2020 letter from Chancellor).
- To minimize the risk to essential staff including IT’s personnel, custodians, public safety officers and facilities staff, general access to campuses/campus areas that are shutdown should be limited to the extent possible. E.g., Access to impacted areas should be limited except by appointment. Campuses can be contacted for specific information (March 20, 2020 letter from Chancellor).
The College will have protocols for ramping down research and moving to remote work, as per the Research Reopen plan. Guttman has none of the kinds of research that would be impacted.
