District 300 Families,
We are seven weeks into the 2020-2021 school year. Without a doubt, the circumstances we are dealing with have created the most challenging school year in recent memory for everyone involved. Thank you for your cooperation, your patience and support.
Since school began we have been monitoring COVID-19-related data within our schools and our community. Thankfully, the efforts of families, faculty, staff, and administration to keep the risk low for spreading COVID-19 have been working well. While the requirements from the Illinois Department of Public Health and the Illinois State Board of Education have not changed, we have looked for ways to maintain adherence to guidelines, keep risk low, and provide more support to struggling students as well as more in-person instruction for our foundation levels at the elementary school.
The guidelines we are required to follow continue to include: consistent use of masks, social distancing to the largest extent possible, hand hygiene, cleaning and disinfection, and contact tracing in collaboration with our local health department.
Adherence to these measures will be critical for our schools to continue to move forward and remain open for in-person learning opportunities.
With this mind, as we look into the immediate future and the 2nd quarter, we are making changes to our blended schedule which will impact some groups of students. Here is a summary of our plan:
- To provide more support for those students who need the most academic help while still maintaining a low-risk environment, we are doing the following:
- Elementary support classrooms (these are classrooms with students already identified through an intervention process) will begin attending 4 days of in-person instruction on Monday, Oct. 5.
- Middle school and high school students who are failing 3 or more classes will begin attending 4 days of in-person instruction during the week of Oct. 5.
- In the elementary grade levels, students/faculty/staff are in a lower risk environment in classrooms since students are in one group throughout the day. Now that we have several weeks of data to show only minimal cases of COVID-19 in the District, we are looking to transition our elementary grade levels back to 4 days of in-person instruction during the 2nd quarter. We will start with Kindergarten & 1st grade who will begin with 4 days of in-person attendance on Monday, Oct. 19.
- Remaining elementary grade levels (2nd, 3rd, 4th) will begin transitioning to 4 days of in-person attendance following the Kindergarten/1st grade provided that things continue to go well. More detailed information regarding these plans will be forthcoming.
Each school will be communicating more information to families who are affected by these changes. Questions specific to your child should be directed to the principal of your child’s school.
These modifications are likely not the last changes we will make as we continue to follow what is occurring and stay informed of developments which come from the state-level.
We are going to continue to move forward. We will continue to be deliberate and thoughtful in our advance through this year. This is difficult for all involved and we are not going to all agree at every step. Given what we are dealing with, this is certainly to be expected and is perfectly fine as long as we continue to work together to both keep our community safe and support children as best we can under these circumstances.
Thank you