Prairie Grove District 46 joins growing list of schools eyeing Jan. 19 for return to hybrid learning

Prairie Grove School District 46 expects to return to the classroom with a hybrid learning model Jan. 19, its superintendent said in a letter to families Friday.

The decision will be finalized at the upcoming board meeting Tuesday, when district officials also will update the board and community on current pandemic data and the status of the district’s learning model, District 46 Superintendent John Bute said in the letter.

The expectation is that the presentation will provide district officials the means to confirm their decision to return to hybrid learning Jan. 19.

During the meeting, the board also is expected to discuss filling an opening, first in a closed session and then with an action item.

Jan. 19, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, is being eyed by several school districts, as well as by many private schools, for a return to some form of in-person learning.

More details will follow the board meeting, Bute said in the letter, adding that some students who chose to remain in remote learning could elect to switch to the hybrid model because some classrooms have open seats.

Requests to switch should be made by email to the building principal and will be considered by order of request as seats become available.

Bute did not lay out a rationale for the return to hybrid learning in his letter Friday, but in an email to the Northwest Herald, he pointed to updated guidance released by the McHenry County Department of Health last month that recommends districts implement the five key mitigation strategies laid out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and consider local metrics as one part of its decision-making process.

“Each metric or combination of metrics should neither be used in isolation nor should they be viewed as hard cut-offs by school district decision-makers,” the health department said in its updated guidance. “Rather, they serve as a guide of inherent risk to inform decision-making.”

Of the four metrics laid out by the health department, two – the county’s positivity and incidence rates – do not meet recommended thresholds. Hospital admissions tied to COVID-19 and the weekly count of new cases do, however, as both are categorized as stable or decreasing.

That means the risk of introduction and subsequent transmission of the coronavirus is higher, and schools could consider alternative learning models, according to the guidance.

“Based on this updated guidance, we believe we are in a position to be able to meet the mitigation strategies outlined by the CDC and feel very comfortable with the in-person/hybrid learning platform,” Bute said in his email. “We have consulted with health department officials and are on the same page.”