D127 is now using e-learning days before they use emergency days to prevent adding days on to the end of the school year.
According to Illinois law, schools can not have more e-learning days than emergency days identified on the school calendar, and so North has five emergency days and five e-learning days.

“Recently, the state of Illinois passed a law that allowed schools to make use of electronic learning days or distance learning days. And what that essentially allows us to do is to use the technology we have access to, to prevent interruptions in learning,” said Assistant Superintendent of Teaching, Learning, and Innovation Tracey Landry.

During e-learning days, teachers and students work from the comfort of their home to get their work done.

“I’m all for it. I think it’s great because I don’t like adding days to the end of the calendar year. Either way, I would rather do it on that day, stay in my jammies and have a cup of hot cocoa, then you know have to be here for another day in June,” said English teacher Amy Alderson.

Although e-learning days were allowed last year, North only had one e-learning day as a test run. This year they will take place more often. Seniors are upset that they will now have to make the days up with everyone else.

“I understand how it would be effective. We wouldn’t have any snow days or extra days in a year, but I feel like one of the main things of being a senior is you get the extra days that you don’t want to go to at the end of the year,” said senior Abby Cunningham.

Teachers think it should be pretty easy to figure out what their lesson plan will be for the day.

“I feel like almost anything that I was going to do in the classroom I could probably do for an e-learning day. Just make a video or something. It’s just a matter of what I had planned to do that I can put on Schoology,” Alderson said.

Students can work at their own time but still do what they would have done in class.

“A lot of my classes are in classwork things, so it’s like a lot of them are like you work in class but they’re online stuff anyways. So I’d basically just be doing the same stuff I’d be doing in class but with a different timeline,” Cunningham said.

E-learning days have given students the chance to work wherever they are and continue their education despite setbacks.

“The beauty to having access to tools like this is that learning can happen anywhere, anytime and in a variety of ways, so we hope that e-learning results in a continuation of learning. Just because school is closed doesn’t mean the learning has to stop,” Landry said.

On Nov 8, class was dismissed after first period because of a water issue. D127 will be making up the day on Feb 14.

“Because February 14 is not a school attendance day and therefore wouldn’t otherwise count as a day of school, by using e-learning on that day, students still don’t have to come into school,” Landry said.