St. Vrain students, unless excused from attending by a parent, were asked to log on online for a shortened day. The schedules varied by grade level, but generally started between 8:30 a.m. and 9 a.m. and ended by 11:30 a.m.
Elementary students started with a 30-minute virtual meeting with a classroom teacher, then had an hour to complete assignments independently.
Middle school schedules varied by school. One school had students logging into six classes for 20 minutes each, while another asked students to log in for four, 25-minute classes then spend an hour completing assignments independently. High school students followed a similar four-class schedule.
"We had great engagement this morning across the district," St. Vrain Valley spokeswoman Kerri McDermid wrote in an email. "Many of our families and students want to take advantage of any opportunity they have to continue their learning, and engage with their teachers and peers, and our strong technology systems allow us to provide this access in times of inclement weather when conditions may be unsafe."
She said parents continue to have the choice to call in an excused absence for their students if they're unable to attend or choose not to participate.
When the district made the decision this fall to continue to replace snow days with online learning days — though the online days were shortened — some students and parents protested.
In December, Erie fifth-grader Finley Mowat appealed directly to the school board.
"Please give us our snow days back," he said during public comment. "A snow day means time to relax, chill and drink hot chocolate. Now, I can't do that because snow days got taken away."
He said he also likes to sled, play video games, sit by the fire and watch movies with his family on snow days. He doesn't like online learning, he said, because he misses his friends, it's hard to complete the activities, and it's harder to get help from the teacher.
"Snow days don't happen a lot in Colorado, so it is nice to have them every once in awhile," he said.
His mom, Kimberly Mowat, started a petition urging the school board to restore traditional snow days that's been signed by more than 2,000 people. She pointed out Colorado will only allow up to five snow days to be used for online learning and asked if families could have the snow days included in the calendar back.
"Let our children be children," she said. "Stop letting COVID take everything from them."
She said she called Finley in absent from Thursday's online learning day, but then had him complete some work because he didn't want to have to make it up the next day. She added that she's been disappointed with the district's lack of response to either her son or parent emails.
On social media Thursday, district parents debated the value of online learning days. Several parents reported that teachers kept the schoolwork to a minimum, giving assignments like "build a snowman," "take a photo" and "go sledding."
Some parents declared the short online learning day a waste of time, saying they excused their students. Others said they struggled to persuade older students to engage, while a few found the activities helpful — especially while trying to work from home themselves.
St. Vrain Valley parent Laura Ruth, who moderates the "SVVSD Community Advocacy Network" Facebook page, said her main concern around online learning days is that they create an unnecessary amount of work for teachers while providing limited benefit to students.
"Many kids don't take it seriously, and this creates additional stress for parents if they are having to manage students who don't want to be online," she said.
©2022 the Daily Camera (Boulder, Colo.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
