The Wake County school board has given Superintendent Robert Taylor permission to study using up to five remote instruction days each school year in lieu of having weather makeup days. This comes after the board and prior Superintendent Catty Moore had agreed in 2022 that remote days would be an option of last resort.
Using remote learning days when in-person classes are canceled would allow Wake to not have to make up those days. No final decision has been made yet by the board to allow the change.
“We can put in a plan that I think would satisfy all of the fears that parents have had, teachers have had, and board members have had and students have had,” Taylor said after getting the board’s permission to proceed on Jan. 28.
NEGATIVE PANDEMIC EXPERIENCES WITH REMOTE LEARNING
For years, some community members had argued Wake should offer online classes in lieu of canceling classes for a snow day.
in 2021, state lawmakers passed a law limiting schools to up to five remote instruction days per school year that can count toward the state’s requirement of 185 days of classes or 1,025 hours of instruction.
School districts and charter schools who want to use remote instruction need to submit a plan to the state Department of Public Instruction annually by July 1.
Wake school board members also expressed their reluctance in 2021 about using remote learning days again. It led then-Superintendent Moore to issue guidelines in 2022 that remote instruction would only be used if the alternative was to cut into vacation days such as spring break or to extend the school year.
STAFF PITCH FOR REMOTE LEARNING DAYS
On Jan. 28, administrators asked the school board’s policy committee for permission to revisit the use of remote days.
“Right now we can’t utilize those (remote instruction) days until after banked days are used, makeup days are used, teacher workdays are used, and so we’re exhausting all of our resources and that comes in at the tail end,” Clint Robinson, chief of staff and strategic planning, told the committee.
“I think staff is saying is there any possibility for us to utilize these days at the front end so that schools won’t have to do particular makeup days and things of that nature and come back into school.”
Tamani Anderson Powell, the administrator who works with the district’s school calendar committees, pointed to how Wake is dealing with challenges such as a shortage of bus drivers.
“I understand parents, coming right off of remote learning after COVID, there was no appetite to continue with that,” Anderson Powell said. “However, I think now we should at least have a conversation about looking at some other options rather than bringing students back into the building and maybe stressing some other resources that the district maybe is already being challenged with — transportation and things like that — when you bring students back on a day that was originally scheduled for them to be out.”
Unlike Wake, some neighboring school districts such as Johnston County used remote learning days during Hurricane Helene and last month’s snowstorm to reduce the number of makeup days they’ll need. Wake hasn’t used remote learning so some students will now have classes on Presidents’ Day and next Saturday, Feb. 22, due to school closures.
“I get the (parental) complaints of why are we having to use a day and other districts have opportunities for remote learning?” Anderson Powell said.
WHEN WAKE SCHOOLS MIGHT USE REMOTE DAYS
Remote days could work because Wake used one-time federal COVID aid to purchase Chromebooks that students can use at home. But Wake, like most North Carolina school districts, say they don’t have enough money to replace all their aging student devices.
Some board members questioned how the remote days would work.
“If there’s a snow day or if a hurricane blows through, what if a part of the population doesn’t have Internet access because they don’t have power?” said school board member Lindsay Mahaffey. “That was the thought behind not having the remote learning days for students.”
But Taylor, the superintendent, said they would not use a remote day on a whim. Instead, Taylor said they’d use it when they have enough warning to know that a storm is coming.
“It is about being able to prepare ahead of time when you know you’re going to use remote,” Taylor told board members.
Taylor said teachers would be expected to provide students with “asynchronous” instruction that students could do online on their own. But Taylor said that they’d also try to print out materials to make allowances for students who can’t connect online from home.
“There has to be an asynchronous component to anything that we lift up as a digital plan because there are going to be kids that can’t access,” Taylor said.
Taylor said it might be a challenge for staff to develop a new learning plan by the state’s July 1 deadline.
Board members told Taylor to continue studying the issue before they decide whether to approve the change.
“Now I think seeing what’s happening in the western part of the state or what’s happening in Los Angeles, I think this is the time to revisit it,” said Mahaffey, who is a former teacher. “But getting three kids — even with a degree in education — to go to school on a computer, it was not great.”
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