District 158 middle & high schools to reopen Nov. 2 in hybrid mode

HUNTLEY – Huntley’s middle schools and high school will reopen their doors to students at the beginning of November under a hybrid plan that will offer each student two full days of classes every two weeks and severely limit the number of students in the building at any one time.

On the same day McHenry County government warned that rises in coronavirus metrics soon could signal more severe restrictions on businesses and restaurants across the county, School District 158 scaled back plans presented just last week. As with other schedules, parents will be offered the opportunity to send their child back into the classroom or maintain their remote learning schedule.

The district’s students in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade will be returning to their classrooms starting Monday, under a hybrid plan adopted earlier that combines in-person and remote learning. Students at Marlowe Middle School, Heineman Middle School, and Huntley High School have been out of class since the middle of March and will now return in groups beginning Nov. 2.
The school board gave verbal approval to the administration’s plan to split students willing to return to classes into four groups, with only one group present in the building at any time while students in the other three groups remain on remote learning. That would keep the student population below 25% of those students enrolled, as board members predicted about 20% of parents would opt out of sending their children back to class.
The new plan separates students into groups labeled A, B, C, and D. The A group would attend classes in person on Mondays and Tuesdays of the first week, while the other three groups connected from home. Wednesdays are fully remote days with no students in school. The B group would be in school on Thursday and Friday of the first week. The C and D groups would follow the same pattern in the following week.

While school buildings have been closed to most students, targeted students have been in regular attendance, including those in special education. Rowe said the plan would help the district address the needs of students who have struggled while attempting to learn at home, students with remote attendance problems, disengaged students unable to connect with teachers through the remote system, and students learning English for the first time.

Thursday’s was the third presentation of a plan to reopen schools, each more restrictive than the last. Superintendent Scott Rowe noted that the issue has divided the community, and public comments that start every meeting have ranged from protecting students by keeping them isolated at home, protecting teachers by allowing some of them to continue teaching from home, to fully reopening the schools and requiring teachers to return to classrooms or take unpaid leave.

In changes that seemed to address concerns from some veteran teachers just last week, the new plan directs teachers to focus on the 75% of students who are connected remotely rather than the 25% seated in the classroom. Teachers had expressed opposition to having to teach online and in the classroom at the same time. As he did previously, Rowe said the district intends to open sections of those classes with heavy enrollment to remote learning only, starting with the beginning of the second semester in January.

By restricting in-person learning to two days every two weeks, the number of students present in each classroom would be fewer than 10, Rowe said. The plan represents the third stage of what was described as a continuum that would lead the district from all students learning remotely to all students returning to the classroom. If the metrics tracking the virus in McHenry County improve, the district would progress to the fourth stage on Jan. 4, with the student population broken into two groups and 50% of students allowed into the buildings on any one day.

“For full transparency, the trend data has not been moving in the right direction as of late,” Rowe said. The McHenry County Department of Health has established a school district metrics dashboard to help guide administrators. While the metrics seemed to be improving across the county, the trend in the past few weeks has turned negative for the number of new cases reported, the percentage of COVID tests that come back positive, and for the number of people admitted to area hospitals with COVID.

Rowe said the county’s figures on people testing positive for the virus have been corrected to overcome some reporting problems, such as people taking duplicate tests or cases being reported twice by two different bodies. The state figures, he said, do not eliminate those errors and give the county a much higher rate. As of Thursday, McHenry County showed a positivity rate of 6.2% while the Illinois Department of Health puts the rate for the county above 8%.

Rowe also noted that while the number of new cases in the county has increased, the number of cases among youth has not. If the number of cases and other metrics exceed the standards set by county health officials, it could require the district to become more restrictive, closing the school buildings and sending all students back to remote learning.

Rowe made the presentation of the plan via Zoom, the result, he said, of one of his children having a seasonal head cold, then getting the COVID test required by the district. The superintendent said he was therefore unable to complete the district’s checklist for coronavirus safety and decided to address the board remotely.

As in previous plans, the district will require anyone entering school buildings to wear a mask. It also laid out steps for disciplining students who failed to keep their masks on or practice other safety measures related to the virus. And it continued to put the burden on parents to check their child for symptoms on a daily basis.

“We can’t have anyone coming to school and clearly ignoring symptoms,” Rowe said. “We can’t play around with blatant disregard for other people’s health.”

Some of the hour-long public comments at the beginning of the meeting encouraged the immediate reopening of school and the resumption of all activities. One mother cited recommendations from her children’s doctor and therapist that remote learning was causing mental health issues for children.

Because the state and county health departments dictate how schools will function in the COVID crisis, Rowe said, the district could ignore all advice and reopen its buildings and programs to all students only to face sanctions from the state.
School Board President Anthony Quagliano said he’d been concerned lately with groups of kids hanging around town without masks or social distancing.
“We’re going to be in a bad situation unless we get compliance from as many as possible,” he said.

He also called the latest plan a “compromise,” and said he expected comments from many in the community that “it’s not enough.”

“You’re not satisfying anybody, really,” he told Rowe. “You’re just dipping your toes in this thing.” But Quagliano said it was a starting point for students to return to the classroom and build toward more transitions.

“Is this what you as an administration is most comfortable with, moving forward with six through 12?” he asked Rowe.

“Yes,” the superintendent replied. “This is the one we have the greatest chance of succeeding with and making it as smooth as possible.”

Quagliano polled board members and received indications from all of their approval of the plan. Acting under the advice of the board’s attorney, board members have yet to make a motion or vote outright on any of the reopening plans, and the administration presents the plans at meetings “for informational purposes.”

Articles in education journals report that school boards across the country have been notified by their insurance agents that liability coverage is being dropped for claims related to returning students and staff who are infected with COVID-19 at school. As a result, many law firms working for school boards have advised against any official action by the board in fear members would then would become individually liable in any lawsuit, according to the journal reports.

On Oct. 8, the board appeared to express approval of a plan presented by Rowe that would have returned students to the middle and high schools at the rate of 50% of students per day. Discussion of that plan wrapped up before the board went into a closed executive session and then ended the meeting without any action. The next morning, the administration announced a new plan would be presented at the special meeting held Thursday.
“We as a board had kind of instructed our administration to move forward with a plan they had presented the prior Thursday,” Quagliano said. “We listened to some of the pushback we were getting, and just through discussion we knew the administration had on their own been more in favor of this plan they had (that was) a little less aggressive in getting back in. … We wanted to give them the opportunity to present it to the public and to us.”

Quagliano didn’t say when the discussion or decision had been made but complained that decision-making was difficult for school board members because they could only meet and discuss matters at public meetings. State open meetings law encourages elected officials of taxing bodies to keep discussion and action of the public’s business before the public. There are exceptions to the law, for things like collective bargaining, but deciding how and when to reopen schools is not listed among those exceptions.

Board member Paul Troy said he had heard from a parent expressing frustration about the board’s transparency on how they arrived at their reopening plans.

“The timeline that you presented last time and the timeline that appears on our website go a long way to trying to address those questions,” he told Rowe. “To me this is something that has been discussed, maybe not publicly, but I want the public to know that our administration has gone to great lengths to look at the minutiae and details in reopening the schools.”

Following the Oct. 8 meeting, MyHuntleyNews reported that Rowe and school board members had attended a private meeting in a Huntley citizen’s home over the matter. State law prohibits taxing bodies from meeting privately, but the district said Rowe, Melissa Maiorino Scheiblein, and Lesli Melendy were the only district representatives in attendance at the meeting, below the number needed for a quorum. The administration said the meeting was held at the American Legion Hall and organized by Dana Wiley, a parent of three students in district schools who had led a protest outside the district’s offices before a meeting in September.