Students won’t get a ‘vacation’ as teachers prepare to give online lessons during shutdown
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It won’t be a total vacation for students while the school buildings are closed to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
Metro-east school district superintendents have been directing their staffs to prepare schoolwork that students will be required to do while schools are shut down.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Friday ordered all public and private schools to close from Tuesday until March 30.
“We’ve seen what happens in places that didn’t move with urgency,” Pritzker said. “I ask all of you not to hesitate to do the right thing for your family, your friends, and your community. One small step at a time, we will get through this together.”
Belleville West and Belleville East high school students can go into their respective buildings on Monday to collect their belongings from 8 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. but they don’t have to attend classes that day.
But by Wednesday, they will be required to start online schoolwork.
“They’ll have to check in … and get their assignments and get their work for the day,” Belleville High School District 201 Superintendent Jeff Dosier said Saturday.
“Kids are going to be expected to do that,” he said.
Dosier said students who don’t have access to the internet or a computer will be able to get a device and find out how to get free internet service.
“It’s quite an undertaking for a short period of time but honestly we were planning for this when it looked like this may happen,” Dosier said.
East St. Louis School District 189 Superintendent Arthur Culver said his staff is working to “engage students in education while under school closure.”
“This work will continue - for administrators, teachers, students and parents. School closure is not a vacation,” Culver said in an email Saturday. “It is a shift that requires re-calibrating, attentiveness and creativity. We will continue to support our students and provide academic as well as social emotional learning opportunities.”
Like the Belleville District 201 students, the East St. Louis District 189 students won’t have to attend classes on Monday but teachers will be in the buildings to prepare for the shutdown.
Meals for students
Area school districts are making plans to deliver meals to students as directed by state leaders.
In East St. Louis, meals will be available for pickup at several buildings and at school bus stops.
For more information, go to the district’s website at www.estl189.com.
Dosier said District 201 wants to provide meals for students.
A Facebook message from the district said information about these meals will be released soon.
Previous school shutdowns
The decision to shut down all schools during the coronavirus pandemic has echoes from the past.
In early October 1918 during a flu pandemic that killed millions of people worldwide, Belleville’s health board closed all schools and theaters and banned public gatherings.
Schools also were closed in St. Louis during the 1918 flu pandemic and that has been credited with helping to reduce the number of deaths in the city compared to other U.S. cities that did not enforce these types of measures.
Illinois Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said Friday he believes closing schools will have a significant impact on minimizing the number of COVID-19 cases.
“We have seen evidence from influenza outbreaks that community mitigation strategies, such as school closures, have an effect on decreasing the severity of the outbreak,” Ezike said.
In Swansea parent Leanne Kniepkamp’s eyes, the school closure needed to be done for public safety.
Kniepkamp, who has a senior at Belleville East and a sixth-grader at Wolf Branch, is a project manager for scientific studies at Washington University in St. Louis.
“I would prefer to do this,” she said of the school shutdown. “They did this in 1918. It was effective.”
This story was originally published March 14, 2020 at 2:48 PM.
