District 300 takes stock of how COVID affected the 2020-21 school year
Du Quoin Unit District 300 documented 1,872 student cases related to COVID-19 during the 2020-2021 school year, according to statistics compiled internally.
Superintendent Matt Hickam said the 1,872 refers to all student cases where some kind of COVID-19 interaction was reported. That includes students who had positive tests for COVID-19; and students who crossed paths with positive or suspected COVID-19 carriers at home, school or outside - whether the student eventually contacted the coronavirus or not.
The 1,872 represents the number of times students had to be excluded from in-school education during the school year. The number does not reflect individual students, since some students had more than one encounter with COVID-positive people and therefore were counted more than once.
Hickam said he doesn't know how Du Quoin's numbers stack up against other districts in Perry County, since this was an internal study.
"The year ended in a really positive way," Hickam added, saying the data shows that only one student in District 300 contracted COVID-19 at school. "The consensus among our administrators is we anticipated it was going to be worse than what we experienced. Now, looking back, we feel like we managed it as well as we could and feel fortunate more cases didn't come out of the school environment."
Meanwhile here are other significant findings:
There were 93 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among the student body, with 41% of those in the high school; 31% in grades pre-K through 4th and 28% in grades 5-8.
On average, 7% of students were out of school for a COVID-related reason at all times.
There were 35 confirmed positive cases of coronavirus among all staff, including Tri-County employees.
120 staffers, including Tri-County employees, were excluded from the K-8 building or high school for at least one day due to COVID-19.
520 students reported having close contact with a confirmed positive case (this is a subset of the 1,872).
According to the data, COVID absences in District 300 peaked in mid-November, with 26 faculty and 276 students out for COVID-related reasons. This led to the district to go "full remote" with learning just before the Thanksgiving holiday.
A second wave came in late January, when 221 7th-graders went to remote learning the week of Jan. 17.
$400,000 in grants
Hickam said District 300 has so far made use of the $300,000 it received in federal COVID grants to reimburse itself for a variety of COVID-related expenses, like buying personal protective equipment and extra cleaning supplies, paying for substitute teachers and substitute staff and hiring a health aide to help with symptom checking at high school.
Another $100,000 in federal grants is being spent on technology - more Chromebooks for students, expanded Wi-Fi service, applications for teachers to communicate lessons to remote students and other apps to communicate with parents more easily.
District 300's application for a second round of federal grants has been approved; and the district administrators will meet Monday to start discussing what to include in their application for a third round of funding.
Hickam said the federal grants are covering virtually all District 300's COVID-related expenses. while the district's 21st Century grants will cover the extra summer school classes currently underway.