As COVID cases spike in southwestern IL, East St. Louis students may start year at home

East St. Louis Superintendent Arthur Culver will recommend to the District 189 school board that it provide remote learning only when classes are scheduled to resume in the fall in an effort to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

School would be delivered remotely for the first nine weeks, if the board approves the plan Friday afternoon, Culver said. After the first quarter, the board would re-evaluate to see if in-person learning could be done safely.

Culver said a copy of the plan would be available after the board receives it Friday.

“We have been tracking the numbers daily, and the numbers have been increasing at a very significant rate in the wrong direction,” Culver said. “I could not in good conscience ask our families to send kids to school for in-person learning.”

According to the Illinois Department of Public Health, the metro-east region has seen increases in the positivity rate, or the number of coronavirus tests coming back positive. The average rate from July 4 to July 18 was 10.3%, which is well above the state’s threshold for keeping the region in Phase 4 of its reopening plan.

East St. Louis 189 has been looking at the COVID-19 cases within the zip codes the district serves, Culver said. Those zip codes contain 38% of the 3,095 reported positive cases in St. Clair County. The district also serves Venice, which is in Madison County.

Households in the district were surveyed in June to see how parents preferred to continue with their childrens’ educations in the fall. Culver said almost 84% of families indicated they’d like to choose remote learning for their children. About a quarter of the district’s households responded to the survey.

Culver said the district identified 563 students with underlying or pre-existing health conditions that would have a heightened risk of experiencing serious COVID-19 symptoms. A “significant number” of the “veteran staff” would also be at a higher risk, he said.

The East St. Louis school district has reported 21 total positive cases amongst its staff, which includes district employees and contracted employees in food service and busing, according to a district memo shared with the Belleville News-Democrat.

“[Employees] know we’re making data-informed decisions,” Culver said. “We’re not letting politics or political pressure get in the way.”

Guidance issued by the Illinois State Board of Education encouraged districts to return to in-person learning as much as is possible, but Culver said the board and State Superintendent Carmen Ayala support districts making local decisions.

In the metro-east, some districts — including Belleville 201 and O’Fallon 203 — have released hybrid plans, with both in-person and remote learning components. Others, like Mascoutah 19 and Edwardsville 10 will have in-person every day, provided the area stays in Phase 4 of the Restore Illinois Plan.

According to an analysis of Centers of Disease Control data by The New York Times, Black people are three times as likely nationwide to be infected by coronavirus. As of the 2010 census, East St. Louis was 97.7% Black.

“Their data doesn’t look like ours,” Culver said, referencing data breaking down COVID-19 cases by zip code, not county. “If our data looked like theirs, we’d do a hybrid model.”

East St. Louis COVID-19 cases by zip code

(as of Wednesday, July 22)

This story was originally published July 23, 2020 at 8:30 AM.