At least one major school district is reverting to fully remote learning for two weeks in response to rising COVID-19 case rates in DuPage County, while several others say they’ll keep schools open.
Elmhurst Unit District 205 will temporarily switch to online-only instruction starting Wednesday. The setback comes two weeks after it became one of the first school systems in the county to bring all students back to classrooms for hybrid learning.
While the county health department is now recommending schools operate with 100% remote learning, it’s ultimately up to individual districts to decide whether to do so.
The county recently registered a weekly infection rate of 119 new cases per 100,000 people. That metric exceeds a state-set threshold to move DuPage from a “moderate” to “substantial” level of community transmission.
A surge in cases across the region leaves a cloud of uncertainty over school reopenings just as waves of students return to classrooms at least for part of the week.
The DuPage health department has seen reports of COVID-19 cases in dozens of students and school employees, but the majority are not linked to outbreak activity inside schools, officials said Monday.
Still, officials warned the risk of school-related outbreaks increases with an upward trend in virus activity in the wider community.
For now, some area superintendents say they won’t pivot to distance learning and remain confident in their mitigation measures inside of schools.
Glenbard High School District 87 has set clear thresholds for scaling back in-person learning.
In one scenario, the district would move classes online if all three of the following criteria are met: Any single county health department metric indicates substantial transmission for three weeks, one or more schools have had to cease daily operations because of building-level targets, and the health department is concerned “spread is happening in the local school community.”
On Monday, Glenbard students moved to a hybrid schedule.
“I’m very confident on our measures and the schedule that we’ve put together,” Superintendent David Larson said. “We’ve slowed the day down. We only have four periods, 70 minutes each. We’re not serving lunch. We have a host of staff to watch the corridors and traffic patterns to ensure students are distancing themselves.”
Wheaton Warrenville Unit District 200 has no immediate plans to halt in-person learning, but officials are closely watching the county’s virus numbers.
“That’s a concern when you see that data trending up,” Superintendent Jeff Schuler said. “It means that the community needs to double down on mitigation strategies, but we’re going to monitor that here over the next week or so.”
In a letter to families, Schuler said the health department has agreed it’s appropriate to monitor data because “school mitigation strategies have been effective.”
A district dashboard shows two students and one staff member had positive tests across early childhood and elementary schools for the week ending Oct. 11. A total of 13 students and three employees at those grade levels have tested positive since the school year began Sept. 1.
Schuler told the school board last week the positive cases were linked to transmission outside of school buildings.
Elmhurst District 205 Superintendent David Moyer announced the “adaptive pause” to in-person learning in a note to families, citing rising case rates and a 46.7% increase in youth cases.
“This means that the presence of COVID-19 is on a large scale and is widely spreading throughout our community at a rapid pace that jeopardizes the health and safety of our families,” Moyer said.