East St. Louis extends school year to help students make up COVID-19 losses

East St. Louis School District 189’s school year will be extended nearly a month after the school board unanimously approved the new calendar Tuesday night.

The new last day of school will June 29 instead of May 26.

Students in the district spent most of the last school year logging into classes remotely, after COVID-19 closed Illinois schools in March 2020. Even as other school districts in the metro-east brought students back to the classroom, the disproportionately higher numbers of COVID infections in the ZIP codes served by District 189 kept students out of school until March of this year.

Before the school board approved the plan, Superintendent Arthur Culver and East St. Louis Federation of Teachers, Local 1220 President Terry Turley signed a memorandum of understanding between the district and the teachers union on April 9.

The extended school year is voluntary for union members contracted for less than 12 months. Those who voluntarily participate will be paid at their daily rate for the additional 19 days. District employees, including administrators, who work 12-month schedules will not receive any additional compensation.

The extended school year is required for all students in preschool through 11th grade, and for high school seniors who have not met graduation requirements by May 19.

“We have a significant number (of seniors) who need this extended learning opportunity to meet their requirements, because of their grades,” Culver told the board.

Chief Academic Officer Jennifer Brumback said that after the first semester, the district had 68 seniors who had incomplete grades or were not on track to graduate. The class of 2021 has 299 students, including 33 at Wyvetter Younge Alternative Center.

For the third quarter, Brumback said there were 168 students with “incompletes,” and another 24 who weren’t on track. Without doing a transcript analysis, she said her best estimate was that there are 100 students who are currently on track to meet graduation requirements by May 19.

“We know that we’ve got a lot of our students who either need to clean up their current quarter grade, or they need to clean up their third quarter grade,” Brumback said.

With the school year ending June 29, District 189 initially planned to hold graduation July 1.

Board Secretary Irma Golliday and member Timothy Lockett Sr. said they had heard concerns from parents about how late the proposed graduation was, especially if they were preparing to send their student to college.

“We were trying to avoid two graduations,” Culver said.

After a board discussion, it was agreed that East St. Louis 189 will hold two graduation ceremonies: one in May, on a date yet to be determined, for students who have met graduation requirements at that time, and the second on July 1, for those students needing to recover credits.

“We are still under COVID mitigation efforts, so maybe (two graduations) would be good,” Golliday said.

There are no plans currently for a traditional summer school beyond the extended school year. Culver said enrichment materials would be shared with parents and that if there was enough student and teacher interest, he wouldn’t be opposed to a more traditional summer school in July.

East St. Louis 189 will receive $78,670,909 in federal funding over the next three and a half years, at least 20% of which must be used to address learning loss, according to the Americna Rescue Plan.

The Illinois P-20 Council, a state agency for education, listed extending either the school day or school year as one of 12 priority topic areas to inform spending decisions.

The Illinois P-20 Council estimates that adding three weeks to the school year would cost a district between $400 and $600 per student per year to cover salaries for additional time, facility costs, negotiations, and other costs.

With a 2020 enrollment of 5,209 students, the latest round of federal funding would easily cover the costs for East St. Louis 189 to extend the school year for three years.

Culver has shared his intention to push for extending the school year not only in 2021, but the next two years as well. The agreement with the teachers union is only for 2021 and explicitly states that the current agreement won’t have a precedential effect on future negotiations.

“Kids have really lost ground with this remote learning, even those that are passing,” Culver said.