Hempfield considers virtual lessons in place of snow days

Snow days could be a thing of the past for Hempfield Area students — at least for the rest of this winter.

District officials are considering a plan to have classes conducted online instead of being canceled when a weather event prevents normal classes from being held. School board members voiced their support for the change during Monday’s meeting. A final determination will be made by Superintendent Tammy Wolicki.

“In the event that we do have advance notice and we know that there is a strong likelihood that school will not be able to occur because of weather, I can have the ability to call a remote day and then we would send the devices home with the elementary children and have that count as a school day rather than using one of our makeup days,” Wolicki said.

The days could only be scheduled if there is advanced notice of impending weather due to a limited number of Chromebooks for elementary students. Elementary students do not have Chromebooks to keep at home because there would not be enough for classroom use.

If a shipment ordered in July arrives this month, there would be enough Chromebooks for elementary and secondary students to keep at home in case of a move to virtual learning.

“If the weather event were to occur with short notice, it would not allow us sufficient time to distribute devices to our elementary students until we have our new order of Chromebooks,” Wolicki said.

The option to replace snow days with virtual learning would be considered a flexible instructional day, which can be used during a pandemic, hazardous weather, law enforcement emergency or when a school building is damaged.

A pilot program for the flexible instruction days launched in 2016 in which 12 area school districts used the days in place of snow days. After that, several area districts adopted the program, but Hempfield was just beginning to explore the option, Wolicki said.

If the district wants to include flexible instructional days in next academic year, school leaders would need to apply for them, according to Wolicki.

“Given our situation with our students and seeing firsthand with my son, I think they would welcome not having to go a little bit longer and the additional instruction,” said board member Scott Learn.