Plainfield District 202 aims to start shift to in-person learning this month

Plainfield Community Consolidated School District 202 announced it aims to return students to in-person learning starting later this month.

Superintendent Lane Abrell delivered an update to the District 202 Board of Education at its meeting on Monday about the plan for resuming in-person learning.

“As we have said many times this year, we all want our kids back in school,” Abrell said in a news release. “But we must remember that this is a community health issue, and we must consider the impact that a large school district has on the rest of the community. We are trying to balance that fact with the fact that in-person learning is the best for most if not all, of our students.”

Assuming the spread of COVID-19 in Will County continues to diminish as it has for the last several weeks since a surge late last fall, the district will start returning special needs students to the classroom on Jan. 25.

Then kindergarten and early childhood students will start to return back in early February. Grades one, two and seven, and high school seniors are slated to return on Feb. 8.

Then on Feb. 16, grades three, four, five and eight, and other high school students will return to in-person learning.

Abrell added that school days will be slightly shorter than normal and lunch will not be served in order to minimize the number and better control of the movement of students in buildings and meet transportation schedules, according to the release.

Schools will send more detailed information to families this week, the district said.

District 202 began the school year in late August with full remote learning as COVID-19 infections began to rise in Will County. The district then planned a gradual transition back to in-person learning and started with about 300 multi-needs special education students returning in late October.

The district then paused that progress as infections again began to rise locally and across the state throughout the fall season.

For more information on District 202′s in-person learning plan, visit psd202.org.