On the first snow day this school year, the Brown County School Board of Trustees unanimously approved a proposal for an eLearning pilot program.
Starting now, every third snow day that is called will be an eLearning day, Superintendent Laura Hammack said at the Nov. 15 school board meeting.
When an eLearning day is used, the snow day does not have to be made up.
On Nov. 15, school had been called off because of an ice storm. It will be made up on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Jan. 21.
If a second snow day is called this winter, it will be made up on President’s Day, Feb. 17. If a third snow day is called, it would be an eLearning day. That pattern would repeat with snow days being tacked on at the end of the school year and every third one being an eLearning day instead of a make-up day.
“The feedback we’ve received from districts who are doing this already and have done it for a couple of years, they said don’t make every (snow) day an eLearning day because it’s too much,” Hammack said.
During the 2016-2017 school year, the first time schools were allowed to use eLearning days, 61 public school districts started using them. In 2017-2018, that number rose to 123 schools.
For the 2018-2019 school year, 250 public and private schools were on the approved list for eLearning days, including Brown County Schools. Private schools were not included in the counts from the previous school years.
A survey about eLearning days was sent to everyone on the school district’s email list, and 402 people responded including teachers, parents and guardians. Of those, 8 percent said they did not have internet at home. However, the survey was sent out by email, so that was an “important piece” to consider since some families may not have had the opportunity to respond because of a lack of internet connectivity, Hammack said.
The eLearning pilot program comes with a few stipulations to help students who do not have access to the internet at home.
Students will have one week from the date the eLearning day was called to complete and submit assignments.
Hammack said there were many comments about taking away “the magic of a snow day” with eLearning days. “Everyone loves a snow day,” she said.
“Having a week to get your assignments done after the day is declared means that on a snowy day, you can still go outside and play. You just have to get your assignments done sometime over the week.”
Of those surveyed, 86.6 percent said they supported an eLearning day option when school is closed due to inclement weather; 13.4 percent said they did not.
The first survey question asked what kind of internet connection, if any, households used, and the top answer was 46.8 percent through a cellular service provider like Verizon. In addition, 35.8 percent reported having internet through broadband and 9.5 percent had internet through a satellite provider, like Hughes Net.
When asked if their student could do their electronic work at home on a device, 12.4 percent responded “no” and 87.6 percent said “yes.”
“That’s a pretty big number of people saying, ‘Actually, our kids can do homework from home,’ but I think it’s really important that we remember 12.4 percent can’t,” Hammack said.
The survey also asked where a child could go to access the internet to complete an assignment if there was no internet at home. “At school on a day when school is in session” was the most-chosen answer; other places mentioned were church and a restaurant.
Teachers will be required to post assignments by 9 a.m. on eLearning days in case students want to finish their assignments that day. Teachers also will be responsible for answering questions from parents or students submitted via Canvas or email on the eLearning day during school hours. But some teachers don’t have internet access in their homes either, so teachers will need to be available the week after the eLearning day to answer any questions about the assignments.
“They will respond as soon as possible. We will have a plan for what teachers will do if they can’t post and can’t respond,” Hammack said. “Those teachers will have communicated with their families before we would have done this.”
School board Vice President Carol Bowden said she was concerned about students not having internet at home when an eLearning day is called and who are unable to do anything until they get back to school. Hammack said students who don’t have internet at home now save their assignments onto their device desktops so they can work on them offline.
Another stipulation to eLearning days will be that students will need to have their school-issued devices at home to complete their assignments. Students can log into Canvas — an assignment organizing system — from any device in their home.
“Phones work great with Canvas, which is amazing. For me, I can’t possibly think about responding to an assignment on the phone, but you put a phone in the hand of a seventh-grader and they do just fine,” Hammack said.
A community conversation took place in October about the possibility of eLearning days, and Hammack said that group was “very supportive of the concept.”
This is a pilot program, and it will be reassessed at the end of the school year with data to determine if it will continue next year, Hammack said.
“It could be great; it could be miserable. If it’s so bad then we figure, ‘Let’s not even try when we get to No. six (snow day), or maybe it’s great and this is something we want to give a go,” she said.
