Dataset: Purpose, Nature, and Scope The dataset was developed to investigate the risk, vulnerabilities, and resilience to COVID-19 in the municipal public school system of Guarulhos, São Paulo, Brazil. Its main objective is to provide a comprehensive empirical basis for analyzing how schools and education authorities navigated the challenges of reopening and maintaining in-person classes under pandemic conditions. Specifically, the dataset seeks to capture the interplay between institutional structures, stakeholder practices, and contextual vulnerabilities, thus supporting the assessment of resilience in education systems facing systemic inequalities and health crises. The dataset is cross-sectional and uses mixed methods. It integrates qualitative and quantitative evidence from multiple sources, including semi-structured interviews with 45 education professionals (principals, coordinators, teachers, cooks, and administrators), additional interviews with nutritionists, structured checklists administered during in-person school visits, field diaries, photographs, and document analysis of official municipal records. These diverse data types were collected across four phases of the pandemic (suppression, reopening, recovery, and adaptation, 2021-2024), ensuring breadth and depth in capturing institutional practices, stakeholder perspectives, and contextual indicators. The scope of the dataset encompasses multi-scalar levels of analysis—macro (educational network), meso (seven regional divisions), and micro (21 individual schools). It encompasses structural conditions (infrastructure, human resources, sanitation, materials), programmatic measures (guidelines, emergency funds, vaccination, training), and stakeholder-level dimensions (perceptions, routines, and adaptive actions). The dataset, therefore, allows for triangulated assessments of vulnerability, risk, and resilience, operationalized through structured indicators and interpreted through a resilience matrix that encompasses the physical, cognitive, informational, and social domains. Although contextualized in Guarulhos, the dataset has greater applicability for examining institutional responses to crises in urban public education systems, particularly in the Global South.