By LAURA HAMMACK, guest columnist
This school year marked an important milestone in the modernization of education in Brown County Schools. For the first time ever, our school district provided a Chromebook electronic device to all students in Grades K-12. While these devices only go home with students in Grades 7 to 12, we are officially 1:1 in our deployment during the school day.
Our students access individual course information on their Chromebooks through a learning management system called Canvas. Canvas is a “one-stop shop” for students to access everything that they need for most of their classes. Our teachers post their class syllabus to the platform so students can keep track of both short- and long-term assignments. Teachers also post their lessons in the Canvas system for students to use during the class period or as homework assignments. Additionally, the Canvas system allows students and parents the opportunity to track grades and performance in real time.
We started introducing the Canvas system to students and staff at Brown County High School and have been methodically introducing the platform to all of our school buildings, from Brown County Junior High and down. With having the Canvas platform in place and also being 1:1 in technology distribution, our district is now in a position to consider a very important policy question related to the use of an “eLearning Day” virtual option.
The Indiana Department of Education offers school districts an opportunity to apply for approval to host an “eLearning Day” program. Upon approval, school districts can develop procedures for using a virtual learning option in place of a snow day that has to be made up at the end of a school year.
IDOE has defined nine criteria that must be met for school districts to utilize the eLearning Day option. And while we have not decided if we will use the eLearning Day option, our schools applied for and received approval from IDOE to deploy the strategy.
Currently, we are in the process of asking for feedback from our families regarding their level of support for using an eLearning Day option when we have weather that makes it necessary to cancel school. I distributed a survey to all of the email addresses that we have in our student data system asking families to give us feedback regarding a decision to use the eLearning Day model. Additionally, I am having my next Community Conversation about this topic this Thursday, Oct. 25 at 6 p.m. in the Goldberg Room at Brown County High School.
It is very important to understand that we have not decided if we will use the eLearning Day option. The most glaring issue of concern is the lack of internet access that many of our families currently experience.
We have learned that there are options that other school districts are using to assist with families who are in this situation. For example, while an eLearning Day option may be deployed for a school day that is canceled because of inclement weather, assignments don’t have to be due the next day school is in session. Instead, we have seen other districts offer a window of time for assignment completion to assist students who may not be able to access the internet at home.
Another option that we have learned from other districts is that it is not advisable to exchange all snow days with eLearning Days. Districts have formulas in place where an eLearning Day is used — for example, once every three snow days. In this model, two out of three inclement weather days have to be made up with a snow make-up day and one is an eLearning Day that does not have to be made up at the end of the year.
We have learned that eLearning Days are not “easy” school days. Teachers learn to build their coursework to be responsive to the virtual format while simultaneously providing the highest quality instruction.
Clearly, the popularity of the eLearning Day program option is growing. In school year 2017-18, 123 school districts were approved to use the eLearning Day option and there are many more approved for school year 2018-2019. Several of our neighboring school districts are all using the option. I have been asked by many of our school family members to consider the option; therefore, we are doing our very best to elicit as much feedback as possible so that we can make the best decision for our students.
We hope to make a decision regarding the deployment of eLearning Days before we break for the Thanksgiving holiday. We will work very hard to ensure that the decision is made based on research and data.
If you have feedback regarding this program option, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me personally, or attend my next Community Conversation taking place this Thursday at 6 p.m. in the Goldberg Room of Brown County High School.
Laura Hammack is superintendent of Brown County schools. She can be reached at 812-988-6601 or [email protected].
