New Metrics from Health Department to Guide Our Plan
Dear District 99 Community:
On Friday, the DuPage County Health Department (DCHD) released supplementary guidance related to the Illinois Department of Public Health metrics. We will follow this guidance to determine what schedule we will follow this school year--and whether and when we can open our school buildings to students for in-person learning.
- The new guidance establishes three levels of community transmission risk based on a variety of factors including weekly cases, positivity rates and rate of community spread; the color-coded levels include Minimal (yellow), Moderate (orange) and Substantial (red). DuPage County is currently in the “Moderate/orange” level. As such, we are following a Fully Remote Learning schedule with limited on-site programs. Please click here for a more detailed explanation about the metrics as they relate to our planning.
- We are currently determining how we might adapt our Hybrid Plan to meet the new guidelines while we are in the “Moderate/orange” level. To accomplish this, we need to rethink our model in order to limit the number of times students change classes in a school day. We will keep you updated in the coming weeks on our progress related to this work.
- Moving between less and more restrictive levels is based on complex guidelines, and the metrics will be updated by the DCHD every Friday. Click here to see the current metrics; we will post this report to our 2020-21 Update Center after we receive it.
Our goal continues to be to return students to our schools as much as possible for in-person learning if it is safe to do so. I greatly appreciate anything that you can do in the community to help move these metrics in a positive direction including wearing face coverings, watching your distance, and washing your hands. As metrics change we will continue to keep you updated on our plans.
In the meantime, we are focused on delivering the highest quality Remote Learning. Our district-wide feedback committee meets this week, and will create a process to collect your thoughts so that we can continue to improve the Remote Learning experience for everyone.
Thank you,
Dr. Hank Thiele
Superintendent