The County of Riverside, California and its Emergency Management Department has partnered with the Beaumont Unified School District to use one of its school facilities as a COVID-19 Point of Dispensing (POD) vaccination site. San Gorgonio Middle School is one of three school sites being utilized by the Riverside County Public Health Clinics.
Other locations in the area include Corona High School (Corona, CA) and Heritage High School (Menifee, CA).
Appointments for Riverside County residents can be made using the Riverside University Health System website signup: https://www.ruhealth.org/covid-19-vaccine.
School district and county enter agreement to use schools during health emergencies
In January of 2020, the Beaumont Unified School District entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the County of Riverside for the use of facilities during medical/health emergencies. During a crisis or emergency, schools, already epicenters for a variety community activities, become safe and familiar spaces for community members to gather. Spread throughout all areas of a community, schools are usually walkable and familiar and have spaces designed to house large numbers of people—spaces equipped with amenities such as dining commons, restrooms, gyms, parking lots, and large fields.
“When the county started vaccinating Phase 1B, tier 1,” Lisa Hendrix, Director of Facilities for the Beaumont USD, told us, “it made sense for the district to open our facilities for vaccinations. Not only is it convenient for the community, our staff are able to make appointments and get vaccinated right here, at our middle school.”
According to Ms. Hendrix, there is no shortage of district administrators, teachers and staff signing up as appointments become available. “We all want to get back to school,” she said, “and for many, being vaccinated seems like the safest way to do so.”
Facilitron platform becomes centralized system of record for documenting and reporting
A Facilitron partner, Beaumont Unified utilized Facilitron’s scheduling and reservation system to schedule and document all event details and worked with Facilitron account manager for Beaumont, Grace Vote, to finalize and upload all pertinent documents directly to the platform. Dates, times, and spaces were approved and the MOU, insurance and approval documents from the Beaumont School Board were added. Facility utilization data is tracked for reporting purposes and all logistics communication regarding the ongoing event are managed on the Facilitron platform.
With everything documented and in place, the school vaccination POD opened with a completely full appointment schedule on January 19th, with operating hours of 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Learn More in these related articles:
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To learn more about how to join the Facilitron POD registry, contact us at partnerships@facilitron.com.