Belleville high schools sending students back home as southwest IL COVID cases spike
Belleville Township High School District 201 students will return to fully remote learning next week.
Superintendent Brian Mentzer told the school board Monday night that staff and parents would be alerted after the meeting that Friday will be the last day of hybrid learning. He cited the rising number of COVID-19 cases in the region and within the district for the decision.
The last day of in-person classes will be this Friday, Mentzer said.
St. Clair County reported 279 new cases of COVID-19 on Monday, the county’s record. St. Clair’s previous one-day high was 212 cases on Nov. 10. Since Nov. 3, the county has hit triple digits in daily cases every day but one.
Belleville 201 has been tracking two main coronavirus metrics since it started hybrid learning: the number of cases diagnosed and the number of transmissions. Mentzer said that the number of cases each week has steeply increased, from three a week four weeks ago to 19 cases last week.
“What you wind up with is a snowball, where that group continues to get larger,” Mentzer said.
Staff and student attendance has suffered because of positive tests, symptoms or potential exposures.
In the upcoming days, Mentzer said the district will work on expectations for staff during remote learning. He said he didn’t know as of Monday night’s board meeting whether they would be working from the schools or from home.
Citing spiking coronavirus case numbers, East St. Louis District 189 announced Friday that its staff would start working remotely Wednesday. While the district’s students have worked remotely all school year, many of the staff were working from their schools.
While none of the cases have been definitively traced back to a transmission at school through contact tracing, Mentzer said the increased cases and the number of staff and students who have to quarantine have been a “significant burden on our system’s ability to function.”
“This is an extremely tough decision, but it is rooted in the desire to protect everyone affiliated with our schools and their families,” Mentzer wrote in the email, which he read to the board.
The district is anticipating a return to the hybrid model, with students attending school in-person every other day, in January.
The board members did not publicly discuss the announcement Monday night.
This story was originally published November 16, 2020 at 8:11 PM.