Illinois schools are increasingly using e-learning not just for snow days, but for tornadoes, floods, and building emergencies, and state rules recently changed after northern Illinois districts ran into problems.

During severe weather events, it is not uncommon to see lists of local schools announcing they will close for the day.

What that means, though, has evolved in recent years.

A growing number of districts are opting to have students attend class online at home rather than simply taking the day off. But districts are limited in how many of these days they can take, and just because winter is over does not mean that schools don’t need them.

Beyond winter weather, schools in northern Illinois have increasingly turned to e-learning after tornadoes, flooding, and even building failures disrupted campuses.

Kankakee School District 111 needed to utilize this option for multiple schools in March after a tornado struck the area, causing significant damage to property and killing one person.

Schools in both Oswego and Grayslake also were forced to close in recent years due to local flooding.

Not all closings are weather-related. Lockport Township High School’s freshman center used multiple e-learning days in November 2023 when a portion of the ceiling suddenly collapsed in one classroom, prompting a complete evaluation of the building’s structural integrity and emergency repairs.

For some schools, these closures can last one or two days, like a snowstorm closure, before classes resume as normal. For others, like Lockport Central and Grayslake Middle School, the damage can be so extensive that students need to be relocated long-term while work is completed.

Grayslake Middle School students were relocated to the University Center of Lake County, a large local training building used primarily by colleges, for over three months after extreme cold in January 2024 burst a pipe and caused the heater to malfunction, resulting in extensive damage to ceilings and floors.

Lockport Central students needed to be bused more than 18 miles to attend classes in the shuttered Lincoln-Way North high school campus in Frankfort.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, schools facing weather or facility emergencies typically canceled classes outright and added make-up days to the end of the school year.

During the extended closures of 2020 and 2021, districts developed formal e-learning plans so students could continue classes remotely. After widespread concerns about lower engagement, absenteeism, and learning loss during online instruction, Illinois limited districts to five e-learning days per year.

This policy has since evolved due to cases like the one Lockport Township High School District 205 experienced.

The district used five e-learning days for its freshmen class while arrangements were made for them at the closed Lincoln-Way building.

Later that winter, when extreme cold hit the state, Lockport found they had run out of e-learning days for the whole district, even though only the freshmen had been placed on e-learning.

Under state rules, the e-learning days applied to the entire district if at least a quarter of the students were impacted.

At the time, District 205 Superintendent Robert McBride said, “We asked and asked about it, but no appeal process or special exemption exists. We went as high as we could, and it’s just a fact.”

However, the rule has since changed, McBride said in a recent interview.

“Now, under the new rules, if you have a facility crisis, you can take those days just for the one building,” he said. “It makes sense because it’s not an unusual thing that a building would have a situation like that and need to use those days.”

Community School District 46 in Grayslake was lucky because it needed to take only two emergency days, Superintendent Lynn Glickman said, but the limit created extra pressure.

“We had to make decisions very fast,” Glickman said. “For five days, it was just all hands on deck with everyone working around the clock. Over that short span of time, our staff had to plan all logistics around classroom assignments, technology, meals and schedules. We also encountered difficulties on three days when our temporary space was not available, so we planned full-day, all-school field trips on those days for students.”

Had more time been needed, the district could have faced difficulties because it had exhausted its e-learning days, Glickman said.

District 205 was one of several districts that had encountered problems and lobbied the Illinois State Board of Education to fix the rule, McBride said. It was changed for the start of the 2024-25 school year.

The change benefited Oswego School District 308 this year, when in August, Oswego East High School was impacted by flooding in a heavy rainstorm, which required the entire gym floor to be replaced.

“The week after school started on August 18 and 19, we had a lot of rain and drainage pipe failed,” District 308 spokesperson Theresa Komitas said. “We had a lot of water come from the roof into the school through all the levels of the buildings.”

While other district buildings did have some storm damage, only Oswego East needed to place students on e-learning protocols for two days.

“It was essential, because the flooding was all through the building and not easy to clean up,” Komitas said.

Over the winter, the district also declared two additional e-learning days for winter weather. The new rules ensured that the district’s other schools still had three days each to use should another storm impact them, while Oswego East would need to use emergency days if more time off was necessary.

Each school can declare up to five emergency days beyond its e-learning days, which must be made up at the end of the year. Beyond those 10 days, schools can seek a declaration of an “act of god” which allows for additional time off to be taken without an extension to the school year.

These “act of god” days could come into play in Kankakee if they encounter any more facility problems this year.

The district took five emergency days “to allow staff, families, and the community to begin processing and caring for their needs from the effects of the storm,” spokesperson Rebecca Parks said.

“March 17 was a teacher institute day to allow our staff to prepare for students’ return, and most students returned to in-person learning on March 18, however, the high school had e-learning days from March 18 through 20 due to the extent of the damage and the need to restore essential areas such as the kitchen and cafeteria to operational status,” Parks said.

This was after extreme cold had most schools in northern Illinois closed for e-learning in January.

In addition to damage to the cafeteria, the Kankakee High School gym will need to be entirely replaced, and significant repairs are needed for the dance studio and the baseball and softball fields to be operational again.

All of the district’s 12 buildings sustained damage, and eight or nine of the schools will need to have their entire roofs replaced in the coming year, Parks said.

For many Illinois students, the traditional snow day has already changed. Increasingly, school closures are driven not only by winter storms, but by flooding, tornado damage and aging buildings that can force districts to adapt with little warning.