CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Chicago’s 330,000 public school students will be back at their desks Wednesday for in-person learning. They’ve lost five class days, as the teachers union and CPS argued over COVID safety measures. Meanwhile, suburban school districts are also trying to sort through the COVID surge minefield.
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St. Charles School District 303 has around 12,000 students. According to the St. Charles District 303 COVID dashboard, there are 332 active cases of COVID-19 reported over the last two weeks. More than 1,1000 students - about 10 percent - called in sick earlier this week, along with 188 staffers.
District 303 Supt. Jason Pearson said that even though cases are going up, he has no intention of switching to remote learning. He said that any possible closures would be school by school or classroom by classroom.
"Last week, we had 114 positive SHIELD tests. Normally, prior to last week, our record number of positive tests were 18. You can see that that was a pretty significant jump," Supt. Pearson said. "If we find ourselves in a situation where it’s necessary, we will try to do a building by building or classroom by classroom closure, as opposed to anything that would be across the district."
Meanwhile, cases of COVID-19 are also rising in Kaneland School District 302, but Supt. Todd Leden said he, too, is not looking to have students learn remotely, partly because it’s not allowable by the state on a districtwide basis.
"The state superintendent, due to equity issues, wants all of the students in school, in-person as much as possible, so remote learning for our students in the typical sense of remote learning from last year, is not allowable," Supt. Leden said.
"The health departments still say stay in school, we will help you if you have outbreaks, we will help you if you have high cases. They can make recommendations, extra mitigations, other things, but for right now, they continue to share their recommendation to be in school and their support for in-person learning."
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