PEORIA, Ill. — The Peoria Area Chamber of Commerce on Thursday welcomed Peoria Public Schools District 150 Superintendent Dr. Sharon Desmoulin-Kherat to deliver the annual “State of the Schools” address, virtually.
Kherat highlighted the challenges and achievements the district has met during the pandemic-riddled past year.
“During the first two weeks of March 20 [of 2020], I received a number of phone calls from our community, just concerned about what was happening in our community, our state, and in our city. Essentially, they were really saying to me PPS needed to do something,” she said.
She said the district selected four priorities to guide the process: one, feed students; two, account for the extended safety, health, and welfare of the over 15,000 students and staff; three, communicate regularly with families and community; and four, continue the learning.
“It was March 15, 2020, the Sunday after the governor announced school buildings would be shutting down, I remember huddling in my office with my leadership team, with Rep. [Jehan] Gordon-Booth, the ROE [Regional Office of Education], Sodexo the food service provider, the Salvation Army, and strategic partners in our community. Through our collaboration during that Sunday huddle, an infrastructure to provide consistent meal service for our families was born,” she said.
“As it relates to feeding the children, Peoria Public Schools’ meal distribution program became a phenomenal success. From late March to mid-August of 2020, we served 500,000 — half a million — meals to the community.”
Kherat attributed that achievement to Sodexo’s coordination of to-go meals at each school site, the Salvation Army’s meal delivery service, and a network of more than 100 volunteers who also went into the community and delivered meals.
Keeping learning going was a challenge, Kherat said, because the district needed to transition over 13,000 students to remote learning.
“Not only did that require training of staff to deliver instruction remotely, at a moment’s notice, it also meant every student needed access to a laptop device and reliable WiFi internet,” she said.
“Through our collaboration with the volunteers from ROE and Peoria Public Schools’ technology department, Mrs. [Michelle] Seipel and her team, 100% of our students had access to laptops through home deliveries or pickups at the schools.
“In addition, we had a dedicated committee for connecting families to WiFi internet. We were able to fulfill all the requests.”
Another challenge was formulating a return-to-school plan. Over 100 district and community stakeholders came together to form a committee who met over 100 times in a span of just two months to put together the plan, which was approved in June 2020.
“[It] became a statewide model for other districts around the state, and has guided us through surges and valleys of COVID-19 since August,” she exclaimed.
Kherat went on to credit the Gilmore Foundation for their donation to make rapid testing possible through Reditus Labs, whose tests provided results within 15 minutes.
“As you can see from our response to the pandemic, we were proactive every step of the way on behalf of our students, staff, and our families,” she said.
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