Hinsdale High School District 86 students will be doing their lessons remotely on Tuesdays through Friday for the next two weeks.
District 86 teachers are spending Monday, March 16 and Monday, March 23, developing lesson plans and assignments for the upcoming week, which students can complete at home via Chromebooks.
The Flexible Learning Day scheduled for Wednesday and the half day scheduled for March 27 instead will be used as full days of remote learning.
Students have been instructed to log in each day to the Canvas Learning Management software system prior to the start of each class, and not check in for all their classes at once.
In some cases, the teacher may lead the class remotely through a streaming platform like Google Hangouts Meet or Canvas Conferences, said David LaPetino, the district’s instructional innovation coordinator. At other times, students will complete reading or written assignments independently.
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Students are expected to complete the lessons during the same class periods they would if they were in school.
Teachers will be available to help students during the class period they would be teaching the subject, and can be reached via their school email, Canvas messaging or other means they specify.
Most lessons will be designed to be completed within the designated class time; however, sometimes students will have to complete “homework” outside the class period, LaPetino said.
The assignments will be graded and the scores recorded, District 86 Superintendent Tammy Prentiss said in a statement announcing the plan for the weeks ahead.
Prentiss said the district’s student services department Monday emailed the families and guardians of students with special needs information about the e-learning plan and how their students would be supported while schools are closed.
The district’s outside cleaning service will do a comprehensive cleaning of Hinsdale Central and Hinsdale South High School and the Transition Center, while they are closed, Prentiss said.
District 86’s food service company, Quest, will make box lunches for students in the free or reduced lunch program and the district’s transportation companies, First Student and 303 Taxi, will deliver them to designated stops throughout the district, Prentiss said. Box lunches will be delivered Tuesday to Friday this week and all five weekdays the next two weeks.
More than 500 students in the district have food insecurity issues, Prentiss reported.
After spring break, which is March 30 through April 3, district officials will assess the need to continue the lunch delivery service, based on the status of the COVID-19 situation, Prentiss said.
All district events and activities until April 6 have been cancelled. However, the District 86 School Board will continue to meet publicly. The board’s next meeting is at 6 p.m. Thursday in the cafeteria at Hinsdale Central High School, at 5500 S. Grant St., Hinsdale.
A Joint Facilities and Special Committee meeting is scheduled for 7:30 a.m. Friday in the Innovation Lab at Hinsdale South High School, at 7401 S. Clarendon Hills Road, Darien.
State officials still are determining how to allow the public its legal right to attend the meetings, while following the new state directive that prohibits more than 50 people from gathering together to slow the spread of the coronavirus.