In response to the rising rate of COVID-19 in Dupage County, at least one large school district is turning to full remote learning for two weeks, while some others say they will keep schools open.
The Elhamhurst Unit District 205 will temporarily switch to online-only notification from Wednesday. The shock comes two weeks after it became one of the first school systems in the county to bring all students back to classrooms for hybrid education.
The county health department is now recommending running schools with 100% remote learning, ultimately it is up to the individual districts to decide.
The county recently reported a weekly infection rate of 119 new cases per 100,000 people. It crosses the state-set threshold to move metric dupage from “moderate” to “significant” levels of community transition.
The increase in cases across the region casts a cloud of uncertainty over the resumption of schools, as waves of students return to classrooms for at least part of the week.
The Dupage Health Department has seen reports of COVID-19 among dozens of students and school staff, but the majority are not linked to outbreak activity within schools, officials said Monday.
Nevertheless, officials have warned that there is a risk of a school-related epidemic growing with an upward trend in virus activity in the wider community.
For now, some field superintendents say they will not lead to distance education and will not trust their reduction measures within schools.
Glenbard High School District 87 has set clear thresholds for back-in-person learning.
In one scenario, classes will move online if the district meets the following three criteria: Any one county health department indicates a significant transmission of metrics for three weeks, one or more schools have to shut down daily operations due to building-level targets, and the health department is concerned. “Spread to the local school community.”
On Monday, Glenbard’s students went to the hybrid schedule.
“We are very confident in our actions and the schedule we have put together,” said Superintendent David Larsen. “We’ve slowed down the day. We only have four periods, every 70 minutes. We’re not serving lunch. We have a lot of staff to look at the corridors and traffic patterns, so the students are giving themselves a distance.”
There are no immediate plans to shut down individual Whitney Warnville Unit District 200 education, but officials are keeping a close eye on the county’s virus numbers.
“It’s worrying when you see data trending,” said Superintendent Jeff Schuler. “That means the community needs to double down on mitigation strategies, but we’ll monitor that here in the coming weeks.”
In a letter to the families, Schuler said the health department deserved to monitor the data because “the school prevention strategy has been effective.”
The District Dashboard shows that in the week ending October, two students and one staff member tested positive in early childhood and early school. .
Schuller told the school board last week that the positive cases were linked to an out-of-school transmission.
Elmhurst District 205 Superintendent David Moyer announced an “adaptive break” for families to learn individually in one note, citing rising case rates and a 46.7% increase in youth cases.
“This means that the presence of COVID-1 is widespread and is rapidly spreading in our community, endangering the health and safety of our families.”
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