Editorial: Listen to the schools before setting fall mandate
State Superintendent Carmen Ayala has signaled that the 2021-22 school year will mean a return to in-person learning for Illinois K-12 students. She's waiting for the current school year to be over before handing down the mandate, but the state board of education has already indicated it is on board.
We're in favor of a clear mandate, as school districts need to know, without ambiguity, what is expected. They have only a short summer to plan for staffing and budgets and to determine what curriculum they'll need to help students catch up. Moreover, we are happy that it looks like we can get students safely back into the classroom, which the evidence overwhelming tells us is a more effective way to teach, particularly for communities with less access to technology and work spaces.
"Although online classes are a far better option than no classes at all, multiple studies show that students learn best when present in-person alongside their teachers, peers and support network," Ayala wrote on the ISBE website. That is especially true with students who struggle academically or with mental health, she added. But some Illinois school districts are raising issues about the coming mandate that the state board and Dr. Ayala should at least take under advisement.
The mandate is built around the expectation that children 12 and older will continue to get COVID-19 vaccinations over the summer. Health agencies and the ISBE have active campaigns to get children ages 12 and up vaccinated, and the benefits of vaccination are supported by the science.
But we all know people who refuse to be vaccinated, and of course that trickles down to their children. For those families, distance learning will not be an option under the mandate.
Moreover, vaccine approval for younger children is not likely until the end of this year or start of 2022, when it is expected children as young as 4 could be OK'd for vaccination.
Under Ayala's expected mandate, only students who are both unvaccinated and under a quarantine order from the Illinois Department of Health will be eligible to continue remote learning.
Tony Sanders, the superintendent of Illinois' second-largest system, Elgin Area School District U-46, said he has families who will still want a distance learning option. Losing that flexibility is "a challenge," especially for large districts, he said.
State education officials are careful not to refer to this coming fall as a simple "return to normal," although we suspect a lot of people are thinking of it as just that.
As a society we've learned a lot in the last 14 months, and part of what we know now is that there are a multitude of ways to do school. Our question is this - while it is important not to create a system where people can go to school however they'd like, can we accommodate schools that want to offer options?
All we ask of the state board is they evaluate what school districts are telling them, and react accordingly when possible. It doesn't hurt to listen.