If they work this week, kids might also try to change a remote learning day on Friday into a play-in-the-snow-day.
With the season's first large snowstorm forecast for Western New York this week, many are predicting — or at least fervently hoping — that Friday will be a snow day. But there's one more question that never came up before the Covid-19 pandemic: Will classes continue remotely at home?
New York State allows school districts to administer remote learning on days that school would otherwise have been closed because of an emergency.
While the children prepare to wear their pajamas inside out and sleep with spoons under their pillows in hopes of a snow day, school superintendents will be talking with each other to gauge where the bad weather is going and which districts will be closed.
But the decision to pivot to remote learning is complicated.
"A remote day is much more complicated than simply saying we're going to learn synchronously or asynchronously online," Eden Superintendent Jeffrey Sortisio said. "There's many factors that go into it."
For a rural district such as Eden in southern Erie County, Sortisio has to consider the accessibility of Internet services throughout the district. And if remote instruction over a system such as Zoom will be used, teachers have to make sure students take their devices home with them.
Another factor is how widespread a weather event it is.
If a district is closed, and it switches to remote learning, that day is considered a school day. In that event, the district is required to transport students to their out of district placements. Those include students with an out of district special education placement, as well as those attending religious, independent or charter schools.
And if the weather is bad in the district, the district would be driving those children at least part of the way on snowy roads.
"I don't want to put our drivers or those students who are going out of district in harm's way," Sortisio said.
The late William G. Houston was notorious for not calling snow days when he was superintendent of Lake Shore Central School District, and for one five-year stretch, there never was a snow day. The thinking has changed since then, and if Lake Shore has a snow day Friday, there will not be remote learning, according to spokeswoman Jane Burzynski.
Orchard Park, Springville-Griffith Institute and Williamsville are three districts where snow days will remain a day off.
"As for the upcoming lake-effect event, we continue to monitor the situation and have discussions with our educational partners and neighboring school districts," Williamsville Central School District spokesman Nicholas Filipowski said.
"If we find ourselves in a situation where we're looking at maybe having to extend the school year because we've used too many snow days, at that point in time we could obviously pivot to remote as necessary for any additional closures," Springville Superintendent James Bialasik said.
Buffalo Public Schools did not announce whether a possible snow day this week would mean remote learning or would be a traditional snow day without classes.
"The decision to utilize remote days instead of the traditional snow day will be made on a case-by-case basis," district spokesman Ka'Ron Barnes said in an email.
The decision is not always simple or easy, but superintendents see the value in having a day off from school every once in a while.
"Our line of thinking is the kids can read a book, take a break, relax, get outside, get some exercise," Bialasik said.
"There is some merit in the life of child to having a good old fashioned snow day," Sortisio said.
©2022 The Buffalo News (Buffalo, N.Y.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
