Evanston Now
Drop was much more dramatic at elementary schools than the high school.
Evanston/Skokie School District 65 reported today that COVID-19 exposures among students and staff fell dramatically this week to 35 from the 82 reported a week ago.
Cases had spiked in the first three weeks after spring break, but fell this week, the fourth week back. The total the week before spring break was 17 cases.
The district’s case counts include both new COVID positive cases among students and staff as well as students and staff who are in quarantine because either they or someone they were in close contact with either exhibited COVID-19 symptoms or tested positive for the disease.
April 29, 2021
When Alejandra Ibanez immigrated to the United States from Chile in 1979, she didnât know the language or the culture.
She came to Evanston as a high school sophomore, but she never felt it was her home. She said the lack of notable Latinx representation in the city was often isolating.
âI didnât think this was a place for me,â Ibanez said. âWhen you donât see yourself or your culture or your gender, those parts of you that help identify who you are, you donât feel that you belong, you donât see yourself as capable â itâs how the internalized oppression starts to eat at you.âÂ
Evanston/Skokie School District 65’s revised social studies curriculum, which aims to increase focus on marginalized communities, is set to be mostly complete by this summer.
The curriculum will involve nine equity components informed by the Illinois State Board of Education’s Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards including interrogating systems of oppression, leveraging student activism, orienting toward social justice and prioritizing historically marginalized students.
Jamila Dillard, the district’s director of social sciences and instructional technology integration, said the district’s goal is to have most of the curriculum completed and written by the end of July.
Dillard said the curriculum is intended to be racially inclusive and include the histories of marginalized communities, including the contributions of the LGBTQ+ and disabled communities.
Evanston/Skokie School District 65 plans to return to full in-person instruction in the upcoming academic year but maintains a commitment to improving remote learning programming as an ongoing option for families, LaTarsha Green, the district’s executive director of Black Student Success, said at a Monday board meeting.
“We fully anticipate a full reopening with safety measures and virtual learning options,” Green said. “So while those specifics aren’t outlined here, I do want us to vision and imagine that that is the goal we are working for.”
D65 administrators presented early return to school plans for the 2021-22 school year during the meeting.
Evanston/Skokie School District 65 will administer in-person spring state assessments in federal and state guidance, according to an April 15 statement.
Assessments for the current academic year will not be waived as they were last year because of the pandemic. The district was given the option to administer the assessments in either the spring or the fall. District 65 Superintendent Devon Horton said the tests will be given in the spring to prevent state testing twice once in the fall and again in the spring the following school year.
“We believe we are preserving instructional time for students and educators in the fall and protecting space to focus on relationships and routines upon return,” Horton said in the statement.