Welcome to the first edition of Updates from 86 for the 2021-22 school year. For those of you who are new to the district, we send this email to students, staff, families and community members every Monday to help keep them informed about what is happening across the district.

If there is a new address you would like us to use for these emails, or you know someone who might be interested in signing up for our updates, please visit or share this link - https://d86.hinsdale86.org/Page/475.

If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe via the link at the bottom of this message.

To help families prepare for the first day of school on Thursday, Aug. 26, we have created a “Back to School – 2021-22” page on our website that features information about:

To view our “Back to School – 2021-22” webpage, please visit https://bit.ly/2XKHx23.

If you have questions or need additional information about building-specific plans, protocols and procedures, please contact your child's school.

Help us celebrate the first day/week of school by sharing your back-to-school pictures with us via Twitter (@HinsdaleD86), Facebook (@HinsdaleD86) or email (d86-info@hinsdale86.org).

If you post a photo and tag us, please remember to include the hashtag for your child's school and the district.

Any back-to-school pictures we receive via email will be shared on social media and included in our weekly updates. If you send us a photo, we will make sure it complies with the board policies and laws that govern issues such as privacy, appropriate use, etc. before they get posted. 

We are currently monitoring the vaccination rates for our district. These rates are based on the number of people who have provided us with proof that they are fully vaccinated against COVID-19. They also assume that those who have not sent us their records are not vaccinated.

Below are the student vaccination rates for each of our buildings as of Aug. 20.

These rates, which are featured on our COVID-19 Data Dashboard, will be updated on a weekly basis.

Our human resources department is in the process of collecting the vaccination rates for our staff. We will include that information on the dashboard and share it in future updates to the community.

Any family that still needs to provide us with their child’s vaccination record can do so by bringing a copy of it to their school or emailing it to our nurses via the addresses listed below.

If you or someone you know still wants or needs to get vaccinated, you can find the location(s) nearest you by visiting https://www.vaccines.gov/. 

In our plan for opening the 2021-22 school year, we shared that the District 86 Board of Education approved a contract with SHIELD Illinois to provide our schools with access to a diagnostic screening and testing system.

One of the key aspects of the system that we support and want to implement across the district is the Test-to-Stay strategy, which would allow us to use testing to keep students and staff in school who are deemed to be a close contact or are part of an outbreak (two or more cases linked epidemiologically that do not share the same household and are not listed as close contacts of each other outside the outbreak setting), but are exhibiting no symptoms of COVID-19 and have not tested positive for the virus.

However, the DuPage County Health Department (DCHD), which determines the rules and requirements for quarantine, issued an update on Aug. 16 in which it stated that it is not approving the Test-to-Stay strategy for use in schools at this time because it does not view it as an acceptable process for exempting an individual from quarantine. DCHD is currently communicating with and seeking clarification from the Illinois Department of Public Health on this issue.

We will keep you updated on the status of this situation.

In the spring, we created a weekly video series about the status of our Future Ready Facilities projects. You can access the videos we have produced so far by visiting https://d86.hinsdale86.org/Page/1806.

We will continue to post all of the videos in this series on our website and share them via email and social media.

The District 86 communications department has won three awards in conjunction with the 2021 Illinois Chapter of the National School Public Relations Association’s (INSPRA) Communications Contest. Below is a list of the projects that earned awards and the categories in which they were received.

The members of the department will be honored/recognized along with the other award winners during a luncheon on Sept. 10.

District 86 is seeking dedicated parents/guardians and community members who are interested in helping our students down the path toward their ideal future by serving as substitute teachers for Hinsdale Central, Hinsdale South and/or the Transition Center. These positions offer flexible scheduling, competitive pay ($133 for a full day and $76 for a half day) and the opportunity to work with extraordinary young adults who are passionate about learning.

If you are interested in being a substitute teacher in District 86, you can apply online at https://bit.ly/3gkVav9. If you have questions or need additional information about subbing, please contact Cheryl Moore at cmoore@hinsdale86.org. 

The next District 86 Board of Education meeting will be held on Thursday, Aug. 26. The agenda and packet of materials for the meeting, as well as instructions for how to participate in the session, will be posted on BoardDocs (https://bit.ly/394u9as) and shared via email tomorrow (Aug. 24).