205 moving forward with e-learning to start the school year

Students at District 205 will start the year e-learning.

The Board of Education in a special meeting Thursday night approved the plan that would see the district starting the school year on September 8, and spend the first five weeks e-learning.

Superintendent Dr. John Asplund said that after the first five weeks wrapped up, the district would then look at their plan.

“October 9th, we would re-evaluate the date based on IDPH (Illinois Department of Public Health) county-level data, and on October 12th, which is our regular board meeting in the month of October, we would approve a future plan.”

The safety of staff and students was a major concern said Asplund who said that learning needs to happen in a safe way.

“In addition, we value consistency for all stakeholders. Therefore the E-Learning platforms of SeeSaw, Google Classrooms, and in some narrow cases Moodle will remain the bedrock of our instructional delivery model for the entire 2020-2021 school year, regardless of in-person status or students.”

Tiffany Springer, the Director of Curriculum and Instruction, informed the board that this new form of online education will be different than what the district rushed to do in the Spring.

“The distinction I’m going to make is between what quarter-four looked like in remote learning versus what we’re doing now. I want to make sure the public is very aware that this is a different form of instruction than what was experienced in quarter four.”

Board President Tianna Cervantez said that the e-learning plan, which is the foundation for the coming year’s education plan, will serve the district will if the school is forced to shut down again.

“We’re creating a foundation so that if we find ourselves back in-person and then for some reason we find ourselves back in a situation like last spring, where within a week time we are having to shut everything back down again, our learning isn’t going to be interrupted. In the same way that it was this past spring.”

Students will be required to check-in each day before 11:00 am as to not be absent.

Teachers will also be providing enhanced instruction that could include synchronous (live-streamed) and asynchronous (pre-recorded) video. Teachers will also develop weekly plans to give parents so they know what is going on in their child’s education and Chromebooks will be given to students and older models will be replaced.

If internet access is an issue, the district will also be setting up the activities buses to act as “mobile hotspots” so that parents or students could stop by, download the packets of educational materials.

Meals will be individually packaged and transported to different schools for meal pickups. Other sites are also being considered but approvals for those other locations will be needed first.

Board member Rodney Phelps was vocally not in favor of the approach and urged the administrators to work hard to bring back the students as soon as they can.

Much more detailed information is expected to be released in the coming days for parents.

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