District 7 Families,
This week, District 7 passed the 100th day milestone for the 2020-21 school year. While nothing about this year has been typical, I hope that everyone is able to appreciate the efforts of District 7 educators who continue to step up to meet the needs of their students. Thank you to the teachers, support staff, administrators, students, and families for doing everything they can to keep our district moving forward.
Edwardsville High School Schedule
Beginning Tuesday, February 16th, Edwardsville High School students will return to a hybrid (A/B) schedule. Students will attend in-person every other day with students with last names beginning with A-L attending on February 16th (“A” day) and students with last names beginning with M-Z attending on February 17th (“B” day). For the second semester, the remote instruction day (Friday) has been eliminated. Students will alternate attending in person and learning from home every other day. Students will be able to follow their daily schedule on days when they are not attending in-person.
It is the district’s intention to return to five days per week of in-person instruction for high school students as soon as possible; however, the earliest date the District would return all high school students to that schedule would be Monday, March 1st. Families will be notified of the change to a five day per week of in-person instructional schedule with at least three days advance notice and will receive additional updates the week of February 22nd.
Any student that chose to be 100% remote instruction for the second semester will continue to receive their instruction remotely for the remainder of the school year.
Families with students that receive special education services at EHS and students that attend EHS South will receive a follow up communication today from Dr. Garrett, Assistant Superintendent with additional important schedule updates.
More information will be emailed from Dr. Stuart in the coming weeks to outline specific changes in building procedures.
Quarantining K-8 Students
This week, District 7 welcomed back 7th and 8th grade students for in-person instruction. There have been a number of positive COVID cases within our schools which have caused classes to quarantine across the district. Please continue to be diligent about conducting the daily symptom checklist and keeping your student home if they are experiencing any symptoms or if any member of the family is being tested for COVID-19. This mitigation strategy will keep our students/staff safe and keep classes from being quarantined.
We recognize it is inconvenient when your student is quarantined. During the second semester, however, we will quarantine entire classes when there are positive COVID cases involving close contacts within a K-8 classroom. The primary reason is to provide continuity of instruction for all students. If there is a positive COVID case within a K-8 classroom, typically around a third to half of the class are close contacts and very often the teacher is a close contact as well. Quarantining entire classes in this situation makes it possible for the teacher to continue to provide more consistent instruction remotely for all students. When a portion of a class and the teacher are quarantined while other students in that classroom are at school, it causes issues with consistency of instruction as well as staffing of classrooms. The ability of the District to have in-person instruction at all grade levels is contingent on having teachers and support staff available to operate schools effectively and safely.
COVID-19 Dashboard
The District 7 COVID-19 dashboard contains the number of positive COVID-19 cases as well as the number of quarantined staff and students within each school in the district as of this morning.
Click HERE to view the updated District 7 COVID-19 dashboard.
Thank you for your continued patience and support as we navigate these challenges together.
Dr. Jason Henderson
Superintendent
Edwardsville CUSD7
