Du Quoin High school ending A/B schedule; will bring everybody back week of March 22

Du Quoin High School will return to full attendance days Monday-Friday starting the week of March 22, officials have announced.

Also that week, Fridays will become in-school attendance days for the entire district, ending the practice of "all-remote Fridays."

The push toward normalizing the school day is possible because the number of COVID-19 cases in Du Quoin and Perry County has dropped and stayed consistently lower, said Superintendent Matt Hickam.

As well, six months of their own internal data has convinced District 300 officials that for the most part, COVID-19 is not spread in schools.

"If we can be disciplined in our actions, both in and out of school, over those final two months of the school year, then we will be setting ourselves up for a good finish to a challenging year," Hickam wrote to parents in an email. "We very much appreciate the flexibility and cooperation that has been shown ... families have been very good at keeping sick children home and communicating with our schools about close contacts or cases within households," he added.

"We've said from the beginning that in-person school is the best environment to deliver education," Hickam said Thursday.

The school day will remain 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., or two hours shorter than the normal 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. schedule. The "grab and go" meal program, which is open to both in-school and remote learners, will stay in place.

Right now, the elementary and middle schools have about 130 full-remote learners by choice, but that number will drop in the fourth quarter, as families are getting more comfortable with sending their children back to school, Hickam said.

The high school currently has 54 full-remote learners, and Hickam expects that number to stay pretty constant in the fourth quarter. At the high-water mark, about 60 high schoolers were full-remote learning. The high school has 440 to 450 students this year.

Officials wondered if going back to full, in-school learning might worry some parents enough to pull their kids out and go full remote, but Hickam said so far that has only minimally happened.

Inside Du Quoin High School, masks will continue to be worn and hand-washing emphasized, but there isn't enough classroom space or staff for each room to have six feet between every student, Hickam said. Classrooms will have whatever social distancing they can manage.

It's a long way from the beginning of the school year, when educators feared it was only a matter of time before they would have to go full remote again. But that hasn't happened, Hickam said.

"Our evidence shows us that the spread of the virus inside schools is not happening," he said. District 300 has had only one major COVID-19 event, when the entire 7th grade had to remote-learn for two full weeks because of a case of coronavirus in school. The district did some cautionary remote-learning after the Christmas holiday.

Before deciding to bring the high school students back full time, the administration talked with the district nurses, Dr. Patrick Riley, a physician who is on the school board, and they surveyed the high school faculty.

"There is a consensus that this is the time, based on what we are seeing with (COVID-19) cases," Hickam said. Another positive sign is that high school have resumed sports - considered high-risk activities - with little or no impact on the COVID-19 numbers, he added.

"So that was another plus in our minds," Hickam said.

Spring sports

Hickam said petitions are flying around Illinois, trying to convince Gov. J.B. Pritzker and the Illinois Department of Public Health to let more spectators into stadiums for spring sports, particularly football, but also baseball and softball.

"I signed one earlier this week myself, it was circulating among superintendents," Hickam said. "We're really hopeful that the rules surrounding sports attendance changes."

In additional, District 300 would like to return to a more traditional high school graduation ceremony. Last year's ceremony was held at Van Metre Field, but it came with a lot of restrictions and everybody was not able to be in the stadium at the same time.