Wake students will likely still get snow days. Schools wary of using remote learning.
The idea of having Wake County students learn from home on snow days instead of using a makeup day is losing its appeal for school leaders.
No remote learning days are built into next school year’s Wake County school calendars. Superintendent Cathy Moore says makeup days and “banked days” will be used to deal with weather emergencies that keep students from having in-person classes.
This comes after the COVID-19 pandemic led to use of remote learning days that varied across schools. Some schools offered live online classes, called synchronous learning. But other schools had no live online classes, called asynchronous learning, where students worked on their own.
”Prior to looking at remote learning days as an option for weather makeup, staff will need to bring to the board a discussion of how to better standardize those days,” Moore told the school board this week. “This has not been a good year. First year ever that they were done, and the schools are all over the place on them.”
Moore said she doesn’t anticipate using remote learning days next school year for weather makeup without talking with the board first.
The board voted 7-2 this week to give initial approval to an updated student attendance policy that says the superintendent can use remote learning days for emergency situations such as inclement weather. Moore said she might use the remote learning authority if there’s another COVID outbreak that forces individual schools or the whole district to temporarily cancel in-person classes.
Moore’s assurance about makeup days wasn’t enough for some school board members.
“My concern is that the remote learning days will be used instead of makeup days on the calendar,” said board member Karen Carter, one of the dissenting votes.
The board will consider additional changes to the attendance policy when it has a final vote on June 15.
Concerns were elevated last month when Moore switched May 14 to a remote learning day due to the gas shortage caused by the hack on the Colonial Pipeline. Moore said the alternative would have been to extend the end of the school year.
Some want remote learning on snow days
Under state law, students must have at least 185 days of classes or 1,025 hours of instruction each school year. In a normal year, a school closing leads to classes being held on a makeup day or using the extra hours built into the calendar called a “banked day.”
Prior to the pandemic, board member Jim Martin said they had a lot of input from the community requesting that Wake adopt the ability to to have remote learning days instead of the traditional school closures.
“I concur with Superintendent Moore’s statement that we need to set some guidelines,” Martin said. “But you know we’re coming through COVID and I think there is some angst that it’s going to be overused.
“But I just want for the record to make it clear that prior to COVID we had substantial input across the district saying that you ought to develop a strategy to be able to do that. That’s important to put into the mix of this conversation.”
Board member Roxie Cash, who voted against the attendance policy revisions, countered that attitudes have changed after seeing how remote learning was used during the pandemic.
“I think during COVID we found a lot of bumps in the road so to have it in here is a little concerning because we haven’t had the discussion about the parameters around remote learning because not everybody’s getting the same thing,” she said.
Moore said there are parameters with remote learning but they’re “just not able to be consistently implemented in a manner where anyone knows what to expect within a school.”
“The guidelines are written as a remote learning day could be synchronous or asynchronous and so it leaves people hanging with understanding what it is,” Moore said. “I think those are the things that we have to clarify and fix to determine if we even want to use them.”
This story was originally published June 5, 2021 at 10:00 AM with the headline "Wake students will likely still get snow days. Schools wary of using remote learning.."
