D230 finalizing fall plans, likely to communicate details to families late next week
Also: Carl Sandburg High School to premiere first-ever virtual graduation ceremony tonight at 7.
Consolidated High School District 230 is finalizing its plans for fall learning, according to Director of Communications Carla Erdey.
“We will communicate details to families late next week, if all goes as anticipated in our final planning meetings,” Erdey wrote in a statement to the Blueprint. “Virtual meetings will then be scheduled to provide an overview and school specific details for families.”
Teachers received a tentative draft of the district’s plans for fall instruction shortly before noon today, according to two sources who wrote to the Blueprint on the condition of anonymity.
Contents of the draft plan were not shared with the Blueprint.
As of the latest announcement from Consolidated High School District 230, the district plans to open school on the previously slated start dates of Aug. 14 for freshmen and Aug. 17 for all other students.
“As covid-19 circumstances continue to evolve, we remain flexible and fluid in the situation,” District Superintendent Dr. James Gay said during the June 25 Regular School Board meeting. “Our teams are working to design the safest educational co-curricular experiences for students and staff.” The district has an Oversight Committee soliciting input from 13 subcommittees, according to D230’s covid-19 page.
The district has not yet released the results of staff, student and family surveys. The district asked that surveys — which included about 30 questions and were translated into Polish, Spanish and Arabic, the superintendent said at the June 25 meeting — be completed by July 8.
Carl Sandburg High School, as seen from La Grange Road | Photo by Orland Blueprint
Teachers — like students and families — have mixed feelings about what is the best avenue of instruction for the fall semester as covid-19 cases increase in many parts of the US. Orland Park cases have risen to 422 in the 60462 zip code and 217 in 60467, according to state data.
Other school districts in Illinois have announced plans in recent days, including Chicago Public Schools. CPS, one of the largest in the nation, said this morning that buildings will reopen for in-person learning on a varied basis, according to a tentative plan. Pre-kindergarten and some special education students will attend in-person full-time, whereas high school juniors and seniors will remain fully remote, and all other students will be in-person two days a week, Chalkbeat Chicago reports.
One of the teachers who wrote to the Blueprint said they do not like remote learning, but they also don’t feel safe going back to school because of many variables, including age, living with high-risk individuals, the difficulty of social distancing in a school of nearly 3,000 students and other factors.
“I am afraid I will get infected and bring [the virus] back and kill someone in my house,” the teacher wrote. However, they continued, “I will probably still teach no matter what, because that is what I do, but I will not be happy. It will add a ton of stress to the job.”
Teachers said the reopening is a complex issue and there isn’t a “one fits all” solution, as evidenced by varying plans being proposed by districts in Illinois and across the country. Orland School District 135 Board of Education members chose to table the approval of a reopening plan at its July 13 meeting to allow for more time to gather community feedback before a July 23 special session, as previously reported.
One of the teachers implored people to wear masks: “My job is to help people to learn to critically think. As a nation we are having a seriously hard time with that concept,” the teacher wrote to the Blueprint.
Another teacher wrote: “I do hope that we are given realistic options considering all of the factors, but those are value-specific based on who you talk to. Working parents need their kids in school and/or ways to help them thrive academically and personally with minimal risk. Teachers need spaces where students can socially distance, but I have 30-32 kids in my classroom; I'm not sure how that can happen realistically.”
The teacher wrote that they’ve battled with respiratory issues for years and would typically get ill two or three times each school year prior to covid-19. “This is the norm for me and several other teachers when we are back in school and has been for years for a variety of reasons.”
Ralph Crecco, a former Sandburg English teacher, said he wouldn’t want to return to school in the fall. Although Crecco retired at the end of the 2019-20 school year, he said he would be “afraid to go back” in the fall, had he still been teaching, because of being at a high-risk due to his age.
“I think the only safe way to approach this is 100% online. Too many people aren’t taking it seriously, especially young people, who think they’re invulnerable,” Crecco said.
Crecco said he has confidence in District 230’s leadership.
“There are too many unknowns but I think the powers that be at 230 will find the best solution for as many as possible,” he wrote to the Blueprint.
Across the country, schools are facing the difficult decision of whether to reopen in the fall. The quality of learning that students received in the spring semester following the abrupt shift to remote learning has been questioned by families across the country.
Unlike many districts, though, D230 had already created the foundation for eLearning prior to the forced school closures, albeit created for inclement weather days, not a global pandemic.
One of the teachers who wrote to the Blueprint said they provided their students with quality learning experiences during quarantine and eLearning, but acknowledged there were difficulties along the way.
Going forward, “I think that with consistent expectations for attendance, instruction, content delivery, grading, student support, and technology offerings (like online textbooks and resources tied to our current curriculum expectation), then remote 'school' can be successful,” the teacher wrote. “But that takes a shared vision by all — administrators, teachers, parents, and students.”
ALSO: Sandburg will host its first-ever virtual graduation tonight at 7. Tune into the ceremony using this link.
For a sneak peek from Sandburg Principal Dr. Jennifer Tyrrell and the Class of 2020 graduation speaker, watch here.