West Aurora School District 129, East Aurora School District 131 and Oswego-based School District 308 are among the Aurora area districts that will use remote learning for summer school this year.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker issued an executive order June 4 that gave Illinois schools an option to hold summer school in-person. However, local school officials said the planning for summer school began months ago and so they will continue with the plan for remote learning.
“We had to start the planning process for summer school many months ago. This included writing course descriptions, hiring teachers and starting the registration process, among other things. We had to use the guidance available to us at that point in time to make these determinations,” West Aurora School District Director of Community Affairs Anna Gonzales said Friday.
“Although we realize that Governor Pritzker has recently granted permission for limited in-person instruction this summer, we have chosen to implement summer school as previously advertised to our school community,” Gonzales said.
Pritzker ordered schools closed in March due to the coronavirus pandemic, so districts had to go with remote learning for the rest of the regular school year.
District 308 Director of Communications Theresa Komitas said the district’s summer school program begins Monday for students and involves remote online learning.
“We have always had a robust summer school program and this year we began to plan early knowing school wasn’t going to go back into session,” East Aurora School Board President Annette Johnson said. “Obviously at that point the only plan out there was remote summer school so that’s what we planned for.”
As part of the remote learning program, East Aurora students in kindergarten through 12th grade were given iPads and educators researched the best apps for each grade level.
“It’s been serving a dual purpose for the district. It’s been helping our teachers grow with remote learning and all of our kids have devices,” Johnson said.
Johnson is confident in what East Aurora can offer as far as remote learning.
“The in-person learning may be fine for those school districts that do not have the robust remote learning system that we have developed. It does give school districts an option to provide instruction if they weren’t able to have remote learning,” Johnson said. “All of our elementary students do have iPads. Some school districts did not provide devices.”
She said that teachers and students became accustomed to remote learning in the spring.
“I know our teachers were disappointed that they could not have their kids in their classes but they are using platforms where they can see their students and interact with them,” Johnson said.
Linda Girardi is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
