New Trier High School Remains Remote After 1 Week At 25% Capacity

WINNETKA, IL — Classes at New Trier High School will remain remote until Monday at the earliest, administrators announced. Students took part in just one week of in-person instruction with a hybrid model that limited capacity to 25 percent starting on Oct. 6 before returning to entirely e-learning Thursday.

Superintendent Paul Sally said increases in the number of new cases in New Trier Township, as well as ZIP codes where school staff reside, triggered thresholds established in metrics the district established for determining when in-person learning is appropriate.

Sally said the spread of COVID-19 in the wider community, not among students and staff, was behind the return to remote learning. None of the 11 students who were positive for the coronavirus at the time had contracted the virus at school, he said.

"In fact, most of these new cases have been traced back to a party and a series of weekend gatherings that many students from New Trier as well as students from other schools attended," Sally told families last week. "It has been challenging to conduct contact tracing from these events. I am disappointed that these events are a contributing factor to our rising numbers."

According to the district's data dashboard (below) there were seven active student cases and 145 students under quarantine as of Tuesday.

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The school board has also approved a contract for a program of voluntary weekly saliva testing for both students and staff, which Sally said could be up and running by mid-November.

Administrators plan to hold a webinar for parents Thursday to explain the program and answer questions.

Sally said in-season sports and extracurricular programs will continue with existing safety protocols, while contact days for out-of-season sports will remain on hold.

"This is not the news we hoped to share this week, and we will continue to monitor the metrics on our COVID-19 dashboard closely so we are prepared to move back into in-person instruction whenever those metrics allow," Sally told families Friday, announcing the one-week extension of remote learning. "When we do resume, those students who have not yet come to campus in person will go first. "