Students in Illinois are returning to school after a year of COVID. Here’s what to know

1. Students are starting the year with full days of in-person instruction.

Just before school started last year, the St. Clair County Health Department recommended all districts start the year remotely because of area COVID cases. Most districts took that advice.

Throughout the year, however, schools in the metro-east continued to adapt and shift between remote, hybrid and in-person learning.

Many smaller, more rural districts were able to operate mostly in-person for the bulk of the year. In larger suburban districts, hybrid learning was common, as was shifting to remote learning around Thanksgiving and winter break in anticipation of an influx of holiday travel.

This year, though, the expectation from the Illinois State Board of Education was clearly set over the summer: Classes should be held in-person for full school days.

While many schools dealt with student and staff cases last year, there were not the massive outbreaks health experts and educators initially feared. Quarantine protocols, meanwhile, sometimes complicated in-person schooling; a school can’t operate if its staff is forced to stay home and districts are all competing for a shrinking pool of substitutes.

Now that the vaccine is available to anyone over the age of 12, though, mass staff quarantines should be reduced. While no districts in southwest Illinois have required their staff get the vaccine, vaccinated individuals do not have to quarantine if they’re a close contact to someone who tests positive.

2. Masks are required.

Masking policies have been the most contentious COVID mitigation in schools this year.

Across Illinois, parent groups have advocated to school boards against requiring masks, both before and after Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced on Aug. 4 that masks would be required in all schools.

At the ISBE meeting in Springfield on Wednesday, parents and educators flooded the public comment with statements against the mask mandate. At least two lawsuits have been filed by parents against Pritzker over the school mask mandate.

The vast majority of school districts are complying with the state mandate.

“We totally understand the frustration that everyone has,” Collinsville Superintendent Brad Skertich said in a phone interview before school started. “But as a school district, our plan is just to have school five days a week on a full-day schedule and we’re going to do whatever we have to.”

There have been some reports around Illinois of parents refusing to send their children to school with a mask. On Friday, four metro-east superintendents who started that week told the Belleville News-Democrat that their districts had few, if any, issues with getting students to wear masks in the first days of the year.

3. We know more about how COVID spreads, and schools are adapting.

A year and a half into the pandemic, we know more about how the virus spreads. COVID-19 is spread through respiratory droplets when talking, breathing, coughing or sneezing. Being indoors, in rooms with poor ventilation, can increase the risk of infection; outside, though, the air is constantly moving, lessening the risk.

Some schools are using that to their advantage.

At Belleville East High School, students have to move between buildings during passing time. Belleville Township High School 201 Superintendent Brian Mentzer said Wednesday that students will be allowed to take their masks off outside while still complying with the statewide guidance for schools.

The same is true at Collinsville High School. In other schools in the district, Superintendent Brad Skertich said staff will be encouraged to take breaks outside or even take classes outside when possible.

4. Schools are preparing to deal with student anxiety, adjustments and trauma.

Even after schools started to bring students back into the classroom last year, most districts offered parents the option to stay remote. As a result, Mentzer said about a quarter of students starting their sophomore year at Belleville East and West had never been on campus before school started Wednesday.

In East St. Louis, Wyvetter Younge School of Excellence Principal Brittany Green said more than half of her elementary students were remote the entire year last year — they’ve never sat through a school day while wearing a mask.

Getting back into a routine can be difficult for kids after a year and a half. Green said that giving students who are struggling a chance to step out of the class and work on in-class strategies could help in the long-run.

“It’s not that they’re in trouble,” she said. “They might just need a break.”

To help students adjust, Belleville 201 is bringing more social workers to both campuses and pairing social workers with administrators in the building to provide a support system that is “less reactive, more proactive.”

“We have students that are anxious about a variety of things. At the end of the day, our focus is on that student support and figuring out a way to lessen that burden that kids are bringing through the door,” Mentzer said. “ … We’ve been very intentional about restructuring the way we’re going to do our social work for our students, to make that our primary focus when our students come in.”