District 202 Schools Explore Options For Reopening In Fall

PLAINFIELD, IL — The Plainfield School District 202 will definitely be reopening Aug. 19 but officials are yet to reach a decision regarding what that will look like, said the district's director for community relations Tom Hernandez.

In compliance with Gov. Pritzker's orders, all district 202 schools closed starting March 17 to try to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

But with Illinois starting to reopen, like school districts across the state, Plainfield School District 202 teams are also in the process of developing three different plans:

• Complete on-site learning with limited capacity
• Refining the remote learning system
• Exploring a potential blended/hybrid model of in-class and online learning

"At this time, we are not 100 percent sure what school will look like to start the 2020-21 school year. But we know it will definitely be different," Superintendent Lane Abrell said in his column last month. "We must create multiple solutions to address how school will operate next fall. Will we return to remote learning? Open schools with limited capacities, masks, and social distancing? Implement some combination of the two? We are planning for every contingency we know of."

During a chat with WJOL last month, he said that governor is urging schools to not just plan for in-person attendance in the fall, but also make provisions for remote learning. There are districts that are planning to have students attend one day in-person with four days of remote learning.

"What does that look like? What are the restrictions? Can we just have 50 students in the lunch room at a time?" Abrell said.

He also said he is thinking about how social distancing would be possible with all the students in a common area and what athletics would look like.

"We will continue to evolve our plans as we get directions," he said. "It's just hard to plan. We're trying."

As one of the biggest school districts in Illinois, figuring out the logistics is even harder for Plainfield.

"We must become nimbler and more flexible despite the incredibly challenging logistics resulting from our size, so we can shift smoothly and efficiently into a new gear if (or when) this happens again," Abrell stated in his May column. "I assure every parent, staff member and taxpayer that we are working on all these challenges and everyone involved will give their all to these critical tasks."

Hernandez said parents and students will be updated as more information is available.

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