Unit 4 Updates

As we approach the Fall semester, there are still more questions than answers about what that's going to look like for K-12 students, including who will be able to attend in person or remotely. This week's Unit 4 Board of Education meeting (meeting agendas available here, videos here) was several hours long and mostly dealt with district's preliminary reopening draft plan. The reopening subject started in the second video at about the 10 minute mark here.

Public comments starts at the 1 hour and 40 minute mark of the same video and continues into the third video here. Community members wanting to participate in public comments had to wait over three hours to speak due to an agenda change that moved public comments from the beginning of the meeting to the end. The PTA let the public know about the agenda change before the meeting on facebook here. The public portion of the meeting was delayed by roughly a half-hour as the closed Executive Session ran longer than usual as well.

All three speakers were strictly cut off after three minutes by a timer going off and the microphone immediately going silent. Speakers included a local epidemiologist, a district bus driver, and a parent with kids from pre-K to High School. All had serious concerns with the reopening plan. After that board members took turns reading the numerous emailed public comments sent to the board.

The News-Gazette had an overview yesterday:

At the beginning of the year, the district will likely restrict eligibility for in-person instruction to students with Individualized Education Programs and 504 Plans, English Language Learners, and students who qualify for free and reduced lunch...

Zola said that would make just over half of kindergarten through fifth-grade students eligible for in-person learning. She did not have data on the number of middle and high school students who would be eligible for an in-person slot...

The remaining students would participate in the district’s Virtual Academy, a wholly separate online school not affiliated with any campus.

That full article here. A slightly longer followup overview was also posted on the N-G website here. An even more comprehensive overview is available from Illinois Newsroom here. This morning there was yet another followup article on the front page of the eEdition here (subscription). Excerpt:

The reopening plan put forth by the Champaign school district at Monday’s board meeting was only a starting point, Superintendent Susan Zola said.

The board decided that the goal of 18 students per classroom was too much, so the district is amending its plans to reduce the number of kids attending in person to those who truly need it...

Which teachers will teach students in school and which will work for the remote academy is still up in the air. What’s certain, though, is that school will be far different from normal this fall.

There was also a brief statement from the Superintendent on the Unit 4 website yesterday here assuring the public that the numerous safety concerns are being taken seriously as they adapt the preliminary plan.

Overall a lot of the concerns raised by both board members and the public went unanswered at this meeting, which focused almost entirely on giving direction and highlighting those concerns to the Superintendent and staff working on the reopening plan. Concerns about safety precautions and protocols for positive infections still appear up in the air as the semester quickly approaches.

Our community still has maintained a low infection rate and strong hospital capacity at this point in the pandemic, even as the rest of the nation already faces a second spike in cases during what is still the first wave of infections in the United States.