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March 20, 2020

Dear CCSD93 Parents and Guardians,

I hope you and your family remain healthy and safe at this time. This message will be emailed to families on March 22 and is intended to provide updates regarding school closures and meal opportunities for students.

As we continue to follow guidelines from health organizations and the state, CCSD93’s school and district administrators will join the rest of CCSD93’s staff in working from home until further notice. This means CCSD93’s schools will also be closed to students and parents until further notice. The best way for you to reach out to a school administrator is via email, which can be found on school websites at www.ccsd93.com or through the directory on CCSD93’s app. You may also call and leave a voicemail, and you will be responded to as soon as possible. 

Regarding meals, CCSD93 is working with our food service provider to continue to offer meals for all students during this closure. Under guidance from the state, these meals will continue to be provided during the statewide hold-in-place. Until further notice, each weekday including spring break between 10:30 a.m. and noon, all students are invited to pick up a free complete lunch and breakfast at any of our elementary and middle schools, as well as the following five additional locations in the community:

• Camden Apartment entrance in Bloomingdale
• Heritage Presbyterian Church in Carol Stream
• Peterson Avenue & Kuhn Road in Carol Stream
• Quail Run Apartment complex in Carol Stream
• Discovery Park in Hanover Park

Meals will be provided in a grab-and-go style and served from CCSD93 school buses under the supervision of our staff members. Parents and students can drive up or walk up for students to receive a meal. Please ensure that as you do, you observe social distancing guidelines of remaining at least six feet from others. Meals will be provided only to students, and students must be present to receive a meal. Meals should be taken home and are not intended to be consumed on site. You can find all of this information at www.ccsd93.com/meals. 

Thank you for your continued flexibility and support. We’re excited for our students to begin working with our teachers again tomorrow! We will continue to keep you informed as updates become available.

Sincerely,

David H. Hill, Ed.D.
Superintendent of Schools
CCSD93

March 18, 2020

Dear CCSD93 Parents/Guardians,

I hope that you and your families remain safe and healthy as we continue to adjust to our new normal. As this situation continues to evolve, we face a very real possibility of being off for a time that extends beyond April 6. Given this new reality, we have revised our plans for student expectations and how we will engage them at home moving forward, beginning Monday, March 23.

You may be aware that some other school districts have taken on e-learning, while at CCSD93 we have been using the term remote learning. It is crucial that our parents fully understand the difference between these, how they relate to guidance from the state regarding school closures, and most importantly what it means for our students.

E-learning requires that schools replicate the school day by providing a scheduled and structured day of at least 5 hours wherein students are expected to complete assignments by specific deadlines. Those assignments are submitted into a gradebook and included in grade calculations. There are regular check ins and requirements for attendance.

While CCSD93 has been investigating e-learning days for specific situations, like single days off due to inclement weather, the state has instructed schools that the current days off will be considered “Act of God” days. With this classification, attendance is not required, it is not counted as an instructional day, and student assignments must not negatively impact a student’s academic standing.

For this reason, we’ve committed to remote learning. Our definition of remote learning is that we will use our resources and staff to digitally support students socially, emotionally, and academically and guide them through engaging learning experiences. On Monday, we provided you with recommended schedules and resources for students and families to use this week at www.ccsd93.com/RemoteLearning. While you are strongly encouraged to continue to use those throughout this week, I am pleased to share with you that beginning next week, Monday, March 23, our teachers will provide daily activities and assignments for students. Please review the following so that you know what to expect as your child learns from home.

Assignments and Activities for Students
Until our schools reopen, our teachers will post activities and assignments by 9:00 a.m. on regularly scheduled school days through the learning management system they had used previously with students and families (Google Classroom, Seesaw, Edmodo, etc.) or via email.  

• Teachers will be available between 9:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. on school days to support students and answer questions from them and from you. 
• As you have questions, please communicate with teachers through the learning management system they post activities and assignments through (Google Classroom, Seesaw, Edmodo, etc.) or via email.
• Teachers may not be able to respond to your communication immediately, but they will respond to all messages from you that come in between 9:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. that day as soon as they are able.
• While the assignments will not be factored into a student’s academic standing, our teachers will assign items that they expect students to submit to them. Teachers will provide constructive feedback to students on those assignments.
• We know that the current situation can be stressful to parents and especially students. Our teachers have been instructed to ensure not to overwhelm students with work, but to provide a level of consistent structure and engagement for students. 
• Teachers will collaborate among the colleagues in their school’s villages (at the preschool level), grade level teams (at the elementary level) and department teams (at the middle school level) to minimize discrepancies and inequities among classes.

Special Education & Student Services
For parents of students who receive special education and/or additional services, our focus is to support your child’s health and wellbeing during this time. Special education and support staff will be working with your child’s teacher and reaching out to you and/or your child to assure that your child’s needs are being met. 

We plan to hold IEP meetings virtually. Your building assistant principal will reach out to you regarding remotely connecting to scheduled meetings.

Technology
Though it will not all be completed on a computer, all instruction will be delivered to students digitally. As a result, it is critical that our students have access to technology tools at home.

• If your child is in grades 3-8 but has not picked up their MacBook and needs to, please call your child’s school and schedule a time to pick up the device with the school’s principal. If your child does not have their MacBook but you have a device at home that works for your child to access the messages, assignments and activities from their teacher with, you do not need to pick up the MacBook.
• Parents of K-2 students will receive separate messaging tonight with instructions to pick up your child’s iPad. Even if you have a separate device that works for your child, it is strongly encouraged that you do this because of the variety of specialized software installed on the device.
• If you do not have access to the internet at home, Comcast has made its public wifi hotspots accessible to all and are offering for new families to join its Internet Essentials program for free for 60 days. For more information and to apply for free internet access, visit www.internetessentials.com or call 1-855-846-8376.
• If you and your child are unable to login to any resource and your child’s teacher is unable to assist, you are invited to call 630-893-9393 or email techhelp@ccsd93.com to retrieve the login information. 
• If calling, please be ready to name the resource(s) for which you are looking for login information.
• If emailing, please be sure to email us from an email address that we associated with your child’s account and include your child’s full name, school, grade level, and the name of the resource(s) for which you are looking for login information.
• If you experience any hardware issues with your child’s MacBook or iPad, you are invited to call AppleCare’s support line 866-752-7753 and use the reference agreement number 3929149633.
• Please follow the instructions linked here to clean your child’s Apple product https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204172. 

Student Emails
To add an extra avenue for students to communicate with teachers, we have turned on emailing services from student accounts.

• When students are logged into Google Drive, they will see “Gmail” as an option in the menu on the upper right hand side of their page. 
• When they click on that, they will be brought to an email page.
• Start typing your teacher’s last name in the to: line, and their name will appear. 
• Be sure to include your full name when using this function, as student IDs are the only identifier that appears with the email to teachers.
• This email function is set to only be able to send to our teachers’ email addresses that end in @ccsd93.com, and students will not be able to send emails to peers or anyone else outside of CCSD93.
• This is an added option that we feel some parents and students might find useful.

Please know that there will be no assignments or activities posted from teachers to students during spring break (March 30-April 3) or on weekends. Again, we are not committing to taking off school beyond April 6 at this point, but as this situation continues to evolve, we face a very real possibility of being off for a time that extends beyond that. With so much fluidity to this situation, we will take this day by day, rely on guidance from the state and the Illinois State Board of Education, and we will not commit to a specific end date to the school year.

Our teachers miss our students, and many have expressed to me that they cannot wait to begin interacting with them again. We are truly excited for our teachers to connect back with students. They will reach out to students and families with a message on Thursday of this week before starting with activities and assignments on Monday, March 23.

The health and safety of our students, staff, and community are our highest priorities, and we thank you for your flexibility during these truly unprecedented times. This is the reality we are working within and we will do our very best to meet the needs of all students. I hope that you are able to use this time to continue to be with your family, to spend quality time together and to impart valuable life lessons. We will follow up with updates as needed. 

Sincerely,

David H. Hill, Ed.D.
Superintendent of Schools
Community Consolidated School District 93