These southwestern Illinois school districts will use remote learning to start the year

The St. Clair County Health Department and East Side Health District recommended school districts in St. Clair County move to remote learning, citing a spike in the county’s COVID-19 cases.

And by 5 p.m. on Friday, some families were already receiving robocalls from their districts to announce the new remote learning plans.

St. Clair County had 4,074 coronavirus cases and 155 deaths related to the virus, as of Sunday. The county leads the metro-east region in both categories. The state’s public health agency defines the metro-east as St. Clair, Madison, Monroe, Randolph, Clinton, Bond and Washington counties.

As of Wednesday night, every district in the county has made its decision.

Here are the districts that have announced changes to their plans to go remote:

• Belleville Township High School 201 — moving from hybrid/ blended learning to remote
• Whiteside 115 — moving from hybrid/blended learning to remote
• Belle Valley 119 — moving from in-person learning to remote
• Harmony-Emge 175 — moving from in-person learning to remote
• Wolf Branch 113 — moving from in-person learning to remote
• Millstadt 160 — moving from in-person learning to remote
  
  
• Pontiac 105 — moving from in-person learning to remote
• Shiloh 85 — moving from hybrid/ blended learning to remote
• Marissa 40 — moving from in-person learning to remote
• Lebanon 9 — moving from hybrid/ blended learning to remote
• Smithton 130 — moving from hybrid/blended learning to remote
• New Athens 60 — moving from hybrid/blended learning to remote
  
  
• High Mount 116 — moving from in-person learning to remote
• Signal Hill 181 — moving from in-person learning to remote

Three districts have decided to stick with their hybrid/ blended learning plans:

• Freeburg 70
• St. Libory 30
• Freeburg 77
• Dupo 196

These nine St. Clair County districts had plans for fully remote learning before the recommendation from the health department:

• East St. Louis 189
• Mascoutah 19
• Belleville 118
• O’Fallon 90
• Cahokia 187
• O’Fallon 203
• Central 104
• Grant 110
• Brooklyn 188

This story will be updated.

This story was originally published August 10, 2020 at 1:50 PM.