What’s new in the 53 Elgin School District U46 schools as classes resume Monday?
Quite a bit, from new curricula in several subject areas to new preschool classes to lots of new computers.
“This is going to be the best year we’ve had in years and years,” district CEO Tony Sanders said. “Everything’s looking up.”
“There is something special, almost magical, about the first day of a school year,” Sanders said.
Teachers returned to work Wednesday, with many attending special training sessions at either Elgin Community College or Judson University to learn more about how to teach the new Eureka Math curriculum. After volunteer teachers tried out the new way of teaching math in elementary classrooms last year, it will become standard this school year in kindergarten through sixth grade. And some teachers will begin “piloting” the new system at the middle school level this year.
U46 spokeswoman Mary Fergus said that “for years, math education has been criticized for being a mile wide and an inch deep, meaning students are exposed to many concepts each year but don’t learn much about any of them. Eureka Math resources aim to help students move through a logical progression of math concepts. These resources facilitate a true understanding of how math works and how it applies to the real world.”
Meanwhile, students in grades six through 10 will be using a new curriculum called StudySync in their English language arts classes. They also will have a new reading curriculum for grades seven through 12.
Also new in the middle schools will be a new health course during nine weeks of their physical education class.
Students in Advanced Placement chemistry, U.S. history, world history and biology also will have new course materials.
Several of the new curricula were adopted despite controversy. The new English language arts materials, for example, were approved by only a 4-3 vote by the Board of Education after three newly elected board members complained that some of those readings presented a one-sided view on political issues such as abortion and the minimum wage. Some of the Advanced Placement materials drew similar criticisms at the school board level.
Bus drivers picked out their new routes last week and were driving along the routes Thursday and Friday, practicing where they had to go. Transportation department officials said that, as they did last year, they will set up a “command center” at U46 headquarters on Monday to answer the flood of questions that always flows in from parents about their children’s bus situation on the first day of class.
One thing placing the schools in better shape than in past years is that many more families have registered their children online — and registered them early. More than 92 percent of the students expected to show up Monday had registered online by Tuesday, according to district officials.
“We’ve made great progress in registering our children earlier,” Chief Operating Officer Jeff King told the Board of Education last week. At that time, he said, 28,300 students, or about 72 percent of the total, had registered. By comparison, only 24,000 had registered at the same time last summer, and a mere 15,000 the summer before that.
Sanders said registering students earlier makes it much easier for district officials to decide how many teachers have to be assigned to each school at each grade level, though in some cases the number of classrooms at a school limits flexibility in that regard.
Sanders said one surprise came at Clinton Elementary School in South Elgin, where 40 children who weren’t expected to enroll “came out of nowhere.” But thanks to early registration, the school was better able to adjust.
Contractors completed 22 repair or maintenance projects over the summer. The full interiors of three buildings (Abbott Middle School in Elgin, Canton Middle School in Streamwood and Gifford Street Alternative High School in Elgin) got new paint jobs.
Other things to be seen:
*Despite much controversy last year over how it was being used by some teachers, standards-based grading will continue to be rolled out across the district.
*Thanks to a federal grant, U46 has added 10 new classrooms for preschoolers — five at Horizon Elementary School in Hanover Park and five in newly rented space in the Jayne Shover Easter Seals Center building on Elgin’s West Side. The lease for the Shover space also passed the board by only a 4-3 vote, with some board members questioning whether the district can afford related costs and whether it is even a good idea for children of less than kindergarten age to be attending a school.
*Gifted programs will continue to expand. The Access to Inquiry and Meaning (AIM) Talent Development Program, already in second grade, will be extended to third grade. Kenyon Woods Middle School in South Elgin has been added to the list of school-within-a-school (SWAS) sites. And third- and sixth-graders will be screened this year to find out which qualify for the IGNITE and dual-language IGNITE gifted programs at the elementary level and for the SWAS program at the middle school level.
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*The schools have added 5,130 new computers, laptops and iPads, with more to come next year. How those are to be used is largely being left up to the staff in each building.
*Wireless coverage is being added at more and more schools. Larkin High is scheduled to get hooked up this fall, and the other four regular high schools already have wireless service. All U46 schools are expected to have wireless capability by the end of the school year.
*About 134 of the 2,500 teachers will be new, although some worked last year as substitutes.
*The enrollment is expected to remain at about 40,000 students.