The snow day. It’s the time to forget about school, plow down a hill on a sled and build a front-yard snowman. It’s a joyful break for communities where snow days consume just a few days of each school year.
And there is evidence that an occasional snow day isn’t going to hurt academic achievement. But in places where snow-clogged roads stall school buses on a routine basis, the loss of classroom time can be a major problem. It’s like the academic losses documented in the so-called “summer slide,” except these are in the winter.
The Owsley County School District in Kentucky started testing virtual snow days, providing home-based lessons when school buildings are closed, about five years ago. This happens when it’s too dangerous for students to travel to school – which occurs about 30 days out of the school year – and educators there say it has been going well. New legislation has allowed nearly 45 more districts in Kentucky to try it.
But supporting a high-quality virtual snow day program isn’t as easy as it might sound.
When The Hechinger Report last spoke with Owsley County’s superintendent, Timothy W. Bobrowski, in 2014, the district virtual snow days were promising, but imperfect. There were a lot of reasons the district should have said “no” to trying it at all. But the educators there made do, worked toward solutions and have continued to refine the program.
Related: As winter approaches, virtual school replaces snow days in some districts
The school district in Owsley County, one of the poorest communities in the United States, has an advantage over many regions in Appalachia: Most homes have Internet access. The problem in this school district was access to digital devices. Many students said they lacked a reliable computer. Next year, the district, which is a member of the Digital Promise’s League of Innovative Schools, will give students Chromebook laptops to use at home and at school. The program, which is being paid for largely with grant funding, includes plans for maintaining the devices in the long term and for training teachers.
In Owsley County, Kentucky, schools have an average of 30 snow days a year
Another problem solved by the school district wasn’t high tech. When students are at home on a snow day, they don’t have access to free or low-cost school meals. In a place as poor as eastern Kentucky, that often means going hungry. In Owsley County, school leaders discovered that government regulations would only reimburse the schools for meals served when the school buildings were open. The district appealed to the government: The regulations already allowed for summertime school meal programs, so why not in winter?
Today, the district is allowed to drop off meals at several places in the county on virtual school days. The district served about 80 meals last Thursday in public libraries, churches and housing developments. That might not sound like a lot, but there are only about 740 students in this rural school district, and many live in far-flung places that make door-to-door food delivery impractical anyway. To make the most of the school lunch delivery program, the district selected food drop-off points near the places where the neediest children live.
Bobrowski said the students arrived thankful for a school cafeteria meal.
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Read more about Blended Learning.
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