DeKalb District 428 to continue remote learning ‘until further notice’

DeKalb 428 will continue its adaptive pause on in-person learning and delay its target date of Jan. 19 for a return to the classroom, the district announced on Friday.

Online-only learning will continue until further notice. Interim superintendent Griff Powell said there were multiple issues that led to the decision - most notably a seven-day rolling positivity rate in the county that just hit 14% and staffing issues with teachers.

“We’ve been paying close attention to the metrics,” Powell said. “It’s a reason for the majority of our students why we are going to continue the pause.”

Powell said some specialized programs will switch to in-person learning starting as early as Jan. 19. But the positivity rate, which was 9.4% in the county on Dec. 26, peaked at 14% on Jan. 4 and 13.4% on Jan. 5, due to a three-day lag in state numbers.

Powell said it wasn’t just those numbers though. Between a shortage of substitutes and teachers needing to quarantine if they come into contact with someone with the virus, staffing is very tricky.

“They say one out of every 12 Illinois residents has had COVID-19, which is interesting,” Powell said. “That’s where you start to run into problems with staffing because when you come into contact with someone, you end up in a 10 to 14-day quarantine. So that has become an issue when a teacher can’t be in the building for in-person learning. It has exacerbated the staffing issue.”

Powell said there was no one issue that led the district to continue the pause.

“It was a combination of different things,” Powell said. “When we bring students in we want them to be safe and we want a productive education for our students and staff.”

Kyle Gerdes, the director of student services for the district, said the students that will return in person include English language learners. Programs that will return include early childhood, Specialized Opportunities for Academic Life Skills Education (SOAL), developmental communications, academic intensive program and the target program.

In-person classes were slated to start on Jan. 19 for elementary students and Jan. 25 for middle and high schoolers following a fall surge of COVID-19 cases locally which spurred the DeKalb County Health Department in late November to issue guidance to all school districts that classes be remote through the end of 2020.

Powell said the decision was made internally with the guidance of the DeKalb County Health Department.

County officials had told area superintendents that the adaptive pause will be allowed to expire on Jan. 19 as originally planned.

Sycamore superintendent Steve Wilder said the goal is for his district to return on that day as planned.

“We got information from the health department yesterday and their recommendation,” Widler said. “The issue we have is staffing. But the thing we were waiting on was the health department, and we got that earlier than we anticipated. Next week we’ll talk things through like staffing and we’ll look at the data. Then we’ll get an announcement out to our families. But we’ve been focused on coming back on the 19th and as long as we can do that safely that’s our goal.”

Wilder said health officials pointed to three things to consider. One was that infection rates were up, but not as bad as feared. The vaccine approval and distribution was another, as teachers are in the next group to receive shots and should be receiving them in a couple months. The last thing was the availability and accuracy of rapid testing, he said.

Earlier this week, Genoa-Kingston Superintendent Brent O’Daniell said his district was still planning on a return to its hybrid schedule the week of Jan. 19.