Cohort Tracking

Contact tracing is generally the responsibility of the Local Public Health Authority (LPHA) for the purposes of population-based communicable disease control.  The role of the school district in contact tracing varies depending on the relationship with and capacity of your school and LPHA. Regardless, the aim is to provide information in regards to the interaction of cohorts and staff in the school setting.

Cohorting and tracking of cohorting is a strong public health strategy to potentially limit the scope of quarantining.  A variety of considerations about scope of quarantining are the responsibility of school administrators.

School cohort tracing is accomplished by compiling daily logs of each stable cohort in the school setting, for school-based transportation, or at a school-sponsored activity.  This includes school staff logs.

In the event of a positive case of COVID-19 within a school community, cohort lists will be compiled to provide to the LPHA with the names and reliable contact information for the applicable individuals who present in cohorts with whom the positive case interacted with while potentially contagious.

In response to the current LPHA request, and in order to align with the current guidance from the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) and Oregon Health Authority (OHA), each individual school must be able to compile these lists in a timely manner and include this information:

  • Name and contact information
  • Arrival and Departure time
  • Parent contact information, as applicable. 
  • Collected for all cohorts who may have had contact with an infected student or staff  
  • Intervention and student support cohorts (SLP groups)
  • Lunchtime cohorts
  • Transportation attendance rosters
  • List of all students accessing the health room, with time, duration, and date
  • Staff and Itinerant staff who had contact with the infected individual 

There are a variety of methods in which cohort tracing/tracking data may be collected.  Most schools already have systems in place that contain much of the needed data. For example, Synergy contains reports that can populate

  • Attendance records
  • Bus route lists (could become bus attendance logs)
  • Parent and Emergency contact info

Either by combining existing data or by developing new tracking tools, each school must establish a reliable method of tracking student attendance, itinerant staff activity, and any overlap of cohorts. Here is a handy checklist detailing cohort considerations when positive cases of COVID-19 are identified at school. 

Cohort tracking for each school may be accomplished via spreadsheets, Google Forms, student data systems, or sign-in rosters, respectively. Below are some examples of documents that can be used to collect cohort data and an example of a spreadsheet that can be populated from this data. 

  • Cohort Tracking Log
    • This cohort tracking log may be more helpful when in an office space, without a regular class cohort.
  • Class Cohort Tracking Log
    • This tool will aid in tracking a classroom cohort as well as itinerant staff and specialists a student may see throughout a school day.
  • Cohort Planning Considerations
    • This document provides a comparison of different choices in cohorting and the potential impact of those choices.