“Zoom school” was de rigueur for most of the pandemic but district leaders have since stopped pushing its widespread use even when buildings are closed. In the Portland metro area, only Canby and Estacada allowed students to attend online school this week.
Estacada enrolls about 3,000 students, 28 percent of whom qualify for free or reduced lunch; 4,100 students attend the Canby district, 38 percent of whom qualify for free or reduced lunch.
Transitioning the entire 43,000-student Portland Public Schools district to virtual learning would have presented logistical hurdles, officials said. Students and educators alike have coped with power outages that would have rendered some of them unable to access or lead online lessons, while others may not have brought home devices when schools closed early on Jan. 12, they said.
Others may not have adequate Wi-Fi access, devices or quiet places from which to learn, presenting equity issues, said Will Howell, a spokesperson for Portland Public Schools.
Portland high school students, facing the prospect of taking final exams next week after a week of no instruction, started a petition Thursday to urge postponement of semester-ending tests. By Thursday afternoon, it had garnered more than 2,000 signatures.
“For us to go back to school next week and immediately have finals would be ridiculous,” said Ayla Ballew, 16, a Grant High sophomore who said she signed the petition and sent it to all of her friends. Students missed 11 days of school during the Portland teachers’ strike in November, she said, making it tough to get through all of this semester’s course material even before this week’s snow and ice disruptions.
“This was supposed to be our week to review all the materials and get all the information we weren’t taught because of the strike,” Ballew said.
Portland school officials have yet to indicate how or if they plan to make up the days lost to weather, but they are running low on options to do so. They’ve already extended the school year, converted teacher planning days and eliminated both President’s Day and a week of the winter break to make up for instructional days lost during the strike.
One hurdle: paying to add days, such as during spring break, is costly. That’s a particular concern given that Portland Public Schools is still negotiating with two unions, one representing custodians and food service workers and the other bargaining on behalf of teacher aides, paraeducators, school secretaries and other school workers.
“We cannot make concrete plans until we are through with not only this storm but also the remaining months of potential winter weather,” Jon Franco, the district’s chief of schools, wrote in an email to families on Thursday. “Only then will we have a firm grasp on how many hours have been lost, how that compares to the hours we need and how we might make those hours up.”
He said the district was working with principals on plans for final exams for middle and high school students.
The few districts that managed a switch to online education said it took a significant amount of planning and frontloading.
Estacada’s school district sprawls over 750 square miles in rural Clackamas County, some of at high elevations. Because of that, the district has invested in online learning for several years, figuring that at least some families are going to need it every winter, said spokesperson Maggie Kelly.
“Two weeks ago, when the forecast was getting colder, we asked our teachers to spend some extra time [preparing for online learning],” Kelly said. When students left school on Jan.12, she said, school staff made sure every student left with a Chromebook. Even before that, families were surveyed multiple times about whether they would need Wi-Fi hotspots or extra chargers to help students get online in case of weather closures, she said.
When some families lost power last weekend, Estacada opened up its high school cafeteria and locker rooms so that students and their families could take hot showers, charge devices and log onto online lessons with their teachers, she said.
Attendance figures suggest that around 80 percent of Estacada students showed up for virtual learning, Kelly said — not perfect and less than a typical in-person school day, but higher than the attendance the district had historically seen for make-up days tacked on to the end of the school calendar in June.
In Canby, the rule is that the first day of bad weather is a snow day, free and clear, but after that, families should expect online learning until schools can reopen, spokesperson Kristen Wohlers said.
Additionally, every teacher was granted prep time before the predicted storm to plan for online learning, Wohlers said. The district gives every student an iPad to equalize device access, and elementary school students are allowed to take them home when bad weather is forecast, she said. The iPads are equipped with Wi-Fi for those whose families do not otherwise have access, she added.
Lessons learned during the pandemic helped the district make the transition, technology director Bret Adkins said, and attendance at online school has been relatively high this week.
Back in Portland, student Ayla Ballew said widespread power outages would have made online school a difficult prospect for many students and educators. Instead, she said, she spent the week catching up on sleep and seeing friends when she was able to navigate icy roads and sidewalks. It felt like “getting winter break back,” she said, a reference to five days of winter break that were converted to school days after the teacher strike concluded.
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