Oswego School District parents group to join multidistrict rally for return to in-person learning

A group of Oswego School District 308 parents calling for a return to in-person learning will join with parents from neighboring school districts to participate in a rally to reopen schools.

The group, SD308 Parents Advocating For In-Person Learning, will join parents, students and community members from districts including Plainfield School District 202, Naperville Community Unit School District 203, Indian Prairie School District 204, Kaneland Community Unit School District 302, St. Charles Community Unit School District 303, Hinsdale Township High School District 86 and Geneva Community Unit School District 304 at a March 14 rally in downtown Naperville to call for their respective districts to return to five days a week of full-day, in-person learning.

Oswego parent Dominique Castillo said that the goal of the event is to show community members that “It’s not just 308 parents advocating.”

“This is all over our state. All over our state, we have people agreeing that the science is there, our kids can return, no more delays, no more excuses,” Castillo said. “We can cater to both in-person, as well as remote. Hybrid does not work.”

Members of the Oswego group also hosted a car rally outside Oswego East High School earlier this year and created a change.org petition calling on the district to reopen schools. Although the goal of the petition has shifted from obtaining a hybrid model of instruction for students to calling for five days of in-person learning, 1,149 signatures have been added since the petition was launched in January.

When it formed, the goal of SD308 Parents Advocating For In-Person Learning was to advocate for having students in school for four to five half days of learning a week. Currently, Castillo said, elementary students in the district’s hybrid learning program are physically in school for 2 1/2 hours, two days a week in accordance with the district’s A/B schedule.

“The issue with that, is while it’s great they’re getting in – I will acknowledge the progress – there are working parents out there, like myself, who are physically going into work every day who cannot leave and go get their child in 2 1/2 hours. We can’t make that work,” Castillo said. “Therefore, these parents are being forced into remote learning, even though that’s not an option that they feel is best for their child, or maybe their child has expressed that strictly e-learning is not working for them. They’re being cornered.”

At the March 1 meeting of the Board of Education, members voted in separate split votes to leave the elementary schedule as is and shift junior high and high school students to four days a week of in-person learning for five hours a day.

If the district were to survey parents whose students are in fully remote learning, Castillo added, she believes that many would have switched to hybrid learning if a schedule of four to five half days of instruction were offered. That number may increase, she said, if the district’s plan for the 2021-22 school year is for five full days of in-person learning with an option for fully remote learning.

That’s the goal moving forward, Castillo said. Five days a week, full days of in-person learning, with an option available for fully remote learning.

That’s also the goal of OSD 308, Superintendent Dr. John Sparlin said at the March 1 meeting, although the district has not yet been informed by the state if an option for remote learning will be required as it was for the 2020-21 school year.

But just because that’s the goal of the district, [it] doesn’t mean that parents are letting up, Castillo said.

“We have to stay on them,” she said. “They switched up the hybrid things and didn’t do things the way they said they were going to do, which is why we’re not letting up.

“We have to have accountability with our board of education,” she said.

And the group will be keeping up with those candidates elected to the board this April, she added.

“We have to make sure they know that you work for the parents and students. You are our advocates. The teachers have their advocate, which is the teacher’s union. We have the board of education, and they need to work for the parents and the students and what the parents and students want, and how we achieve that safely and legally,” Castillo said.

“The entire state has a huge majority of parents who are advocating for this exact same thing. Nobody wants anybody to be unsafe, but we have to acknowledge that it is now safe. It is not March of 2020, it is March of 2021.”

The rally is scheduled from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Sunday, March 14, in downtown Naperville, and will include a walk from Webster Street and Douglas Avenue to the Free Speech Pavilion near the fountain at Webster Street and Jackson Avenue.

Among the speakers will be State Sen. Darren Bailey, R-Louisville, and a Republican Party candidate for governor.