Reopening Schools - Preliminary Ideas

[UPDATE: The News-Gazette had more on this very topic a couple days after this post. Excerpt:

As they try to prepare for next school year, superintendents are trying to create some semblance of a plan without knowing what’s coming next. The Illinois State Board of Education hasn’t issued guidelines for the upcoming school year yet, so districts are planning for three different possibilities: a return to full-on remote learning, all students back in school, or some sort of a hybrid model where a portion of students are in school at a given time.

Full article here.]

There have been several news stories about potential and very preliminary plans for schools reopening in the fall with the ongoing concerns about COVID-19. Our region has been doing better than others when it comes to keeping infections and outbreaks contained (see previous Cheat Sheet update on the coronavirus updates here). The current Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation out of the University of Washington has their latest forecast models here.

People might remember their projections from earlier in the pandemic being used by the White House. Their projections have continued to incorporate new information, new policies, and how populations have adhered to those policies. Here is the latest as of this posting on total death and daily death projections going into the next school year (click to enlarge graphs):

The projected plateau of daily deaths bottoms out towards the end of summer and appears to rise with the reopening of schools and typical epidemiological factors in the fall. As always, none of this is written in stone and depends on our own behaviors and sometimes good or bad fortune with outbreak events. The Atlantic had a recent article looking at various challenges facing schools in general here.

The Daily Illini had an overview of the Parkland hybrid fall plan here. Excerpt:

For Parkland students, this would mean on-campus courses will be marked as such, but part of the coursework would still be completed online, according to a Parkland College press release.

On-campus courses would still have to follow social distancing guidelines, meaning students may be divided into smaller groups and classes larger enrollments may require staggered scheduling.

Additionally, many on-campus meetings may end after Nov. 20 in order to minimize contact after Thanksgiving break. The classes would still continue online through the end of the regularly scheduled semester.

Some career classes may meet on-campus until the end of the semester, though.

That full article here. The University of Illinois is still formulating its plan, but there have been some updates on that process. Tom's Mailbag had some questions and answers on the subject last week here. Excerpt:

Urbana campus spokeswoman Robin Kaler said a decision on fall instruction would be made in mid-June...

Earlier this week, however, Provost Andreas Cangellaris said that the draft recommendation from an academic affairs team called for an end to on-campus instruction at the fall break. After that, students would return home for eight days of online instruction and six days of exams.

That seems to fall in line with what other Big Ten schools are planning.

Full Tom's Mailbag article here with the U of I planning question the second question down. Other recent articles noted an ACT/SAT testing waiver being approved and an updated timeline on a fall plan within the next couple weeks:

A draft of that report recommended ending in-person instruction at Thanksgiving break, with the last eight days of instruction and exams held online to reduce travel back and forth to campus.

It also said that if central Illinois is in Phase 4 of the governor’s “Restore Illinois” plan, which is likely, classes with more than 50 students would have to be held entirely online.

And to help spread out students, classes may be held in the evening, on Saturdays and in non-academic spaces, the report stated.

That full article from Wednesday here. Illinois Newsroom had coverage and links for the draft plan here as well as faculty safety concerns and opposition to reopening in the fall.


I'm still catching up on Unit 4 and District 116 meeting information, but I have some highlights from the coverage so far. Illinois Newsroom had an interview with Unit 4 Superintendent Zola about potential issues with the fall here. Excerpt:

I think we learned a lot in this first chapter of COVID-19 around food, and what our families need. We’ve created a pretty significant platform around remote learning. We also are finding that by providing devices to homes and by mitigating the access to technology that we are beginning to sort of level that playing field. I would sense that if there is another stay-at-home order in the fall, that we’re going to be in a much better place in terms of the timely response and also making sure families already have devices. We’re not going to have to roll out the numbers of devices that we did this spring. I’m in several conversations. We have an area superintendents group that meets with the regional superintendent on a regular basis. I’m in a larger group called the large urban districts, and so that’s large school districts across the state. So those are two spaces where we’ve begun to have some conversations about what school might look like in the fall...

I think schools will raise their value level in the fall. I think parents are going to be grateful when we reopen. I think they’re going to be appreciative of what school has been for them and for their children, I think they’re going to be excited to return in the fall, and whatever version that looks like, hopefully a somewhat normal version where the bus comes up and the students get on, and we’re able to feed them breakfast and do some learning and have a healthy lunch and some recess time.

That full article here with a lot of information about Summer programs, budgets, feeding kids, and more.

District 116 Board of Education had a study session meeting on June 2nd (agenda, video) where they discussed remote learning and registration planning going into the fall. It was a long meeting and I haven't had a chance to wade through it, but it appeared that they are still working out managing the fall and coronvirus safety concerns and touched on the topic in those two presentations.

As has come up in the Urbana City Council and among activists and protesters locally and nationally, there has been another look at police officers in schools. Illinois Newsroom had an overview of the issue here. The same safety and budget concerns with putting Student Resource Officers into schools remain along with concerns about the school to prison pipeline for minority students who tend to face disparities in school discipline (including in Urbana schools).

It's not a lot of information yet, and a lot of it depends on how the coronavirus projections diverge from actual infections and deaths over the summer. The interrupted Spring semester was a crash course in a sudden and extreme scenario where super spreader events could have created untold numbers of uncontrolled outbreaks. With some luck and hard work, the Fall semester should be far less extreme, even if far from the normal we'd like.


[Updated: Original post published on 6/12/2020 at 10:39am.]