North Cook News

With the school year underway, Illinois schools are dealing a variety of adjustments to ongoing restrictions and concerns related to COVID-19, including responding to demands from athletes, coaches and parents for a return of high school sports.

But even as significant changes capture the headlines, some children are slipping through the educational cracks.

Kathy Bilinski, a parent in Arlington Heights School District 25, who is among those pushing for the reopening of schools, said that remote instruction has children learning from a teacher who isn’t in the same room with them isn’t conducive to education.

While she struggles to keep up with the different phases that are proposed and the uncertainty over what combination of half-days and full-days, virtual and in-person and even in-person-virtual – where students are in the classroom but teachers are not – Bilinski told the North Cook News she is frustrated “with the whole scenario.”

As the mother of a freshman, she said the most challenging part has been having such a disruptive introduction to high school for her son.

“He knows nothing about the school – he’s not even familiar with the school,” she told the North Cook News. 

Everything is new to him, yet he doesn’t even get the opportunity to get to know his teachers in a personable environment, she said. It even makes it more difficult for him to feel comfortable approaching the teachers with questions about areas where he may be struggling.

“For him, learning needs to take place in the classroom,” Bilinski told the North Cook News. “There’s too many distractions at the house for him.”

Her son has missed assignments and classes, though he never had trouble keeping up with his schoolwork in previous grades, she said. But there doesn’t seem to be any resources or services to help.

“All of a sudden now, he’s taking a dive, and, what are the services you guys are going to provide for kids like him?” Bilinski told the North Cook News she asked of teachers and her son’s guidance counselor, but she found they had nothing to offer.