NORFOLK — With two emergency days left until the end of the school year, Norwood-Norfolk Central School officials are exploring the potential use of remote learning days when school is closed because of weather conditions.
But, Superintendent James M. Cruikshank said, they’d rather not use remote learning days if possible.
The 2022-23 school year began with 185 days on the schedule. The state requires school to be in session 180 days, so five days were set aside as emergency days.
“So, for instance, if we use six snow days this year, then we’ll only have 179 days of school, So, we would be required to find an additional day and bring students into school. We couldn’t simply tack a day on at the end of the year as New York state has an official ending date,” Mr. Cruikshank said.
That leaves districts with two options if they’re faced with running out of snow days, options that he said they’re beginning to contemplate — an existing vacation day could be converted to a school day, or they could have students take part in remote learning from their homes.
The state initially made the remote learning option available as a pilot program.
“Quite a few schools around New York state engaged in that pilot and used remote learning days instead of snow days,” Mr. Cruikshank said.
Now, it’s an option available to all schools.
“I believe next year the state is requiring us to include a remote learning plan in our safety plan. We’re working on that now,” he said.
While it may be included as part of the safety plan, Mr. Cruikshank said that doesn’t mean remote days need to be used.
“We’re hoping we won’t engage in that this year or any year, but we will have to develop a plan regardless of what happens this year,” he said. “Personally, I don’t think it fits our community well. So, I wouldn’t go down that road unless we expended all of our snow days.”
Instead, he said, they could consider using scheduled vacation days, such as spring break, as school days to make up the lost time.
He said the district’s policy in deciding to close school or keep it open is to determine if its buses will be able to safely pick children up.
“We have professional drivers. They’re very good at what they do,” Mr. Cruikshank said. “If we can get them here safely, we will.”
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