Mat-Su schools drop remote learning for weather closures

PALMER — Alaska’s second largest school district is suspending the use of remote learning days when bad weather prompts closures.

The change comes after Alaska Education Commissioner Deena Bishop said last week that the state education department is reconsidering the practice of counting “e-learning” days toward the total instructional days required under state law.

Anchorage School District officials say they expect to make a decision on the matter soon. District officials with the Kenai Peninsula and Fairbanks North Star boroughs say schools there don’t make use of remote learning during weather closures.

Matanuska-Susitna Borough School district officials now say schools will no longer use remote learning during weather-related closures until they “receive further clarification on the matter.”

After icy roads made for dangerous travel in the Susitna Valley Tuesday and Wednesday, Mat-Su district officials announced closures for schools in Trapper Creek, Willow and Talkeetna, making it clear “this is not a remote learning day.”

District superintendents were notified Dec. 7 that e-learning days should not be expected to count as school days for “brick-and-mortar” schools, according to Mat-Su district spokesman John Notestine.

“The Commissioner’s recent communication to superintendents has influenced our ability to offer remote learning days,” Notestine said in an email. “Given the clarification that such days may no longer count toward the total instructional days for the year, we have adjusted our approach accordingly.”

The Mat-Su district operates nearly 50 schools with more than 19,000 students spread across a borough the size of West Virginia. The district provides each student with Chromebook laptops for use in class but also at home.

Schools in Mat-Su and Anchorage have made fairly regular use of remote learning in recent years, including several times since October.

The Anchorage School District has not yet decided how to handle the issue of remote learning during weather closures, spokesperson Corey Allen Young said this week.

“This matter is currently being discussed, with the intention of making a decision in the near future,” Young said in an email.

A spokesman for the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development did not return a request for more information.

Bishop’s comments questioning the use of e-learning to the state board came during a presentation on student absenteeism last Thursday. She included weather-related school closures in a discussion of increasing school absences.

Alaska’s rate of chronic student absenteeism has spiked since the pandemic.

Bishop last week said that before the pandemic, the education department allowed individual districts up to two snow days a year without mandatory additional school time.

Since the pandemic, the department has begun allowing districts to make up that time with “remote learning,” which Bishop and board of education members agreed was not sufficient to make up for lost in-person instruction.

For some families, shifting to online classes on bad-weather days can also be fraught, especially for working parents or in homes with limited internet access.

In Mat-Su, district officials “firmly believe that in-person, brick-and-mortar learning provides the most effective educational experience for our students,” Notestine said, adding that the district’s policy of providing Chromebooks to students still represents “robust plans in place for remote learning and delivery, should the need arise.”

State law requires a minimum of 170 days in session every school year. Districts dealing with closures that result in fewer days can request waiver approval from the commissioner.

The Mat-Su district’s calendar includes 175 instructional days for secondary schools and 172 for elementary schools, according to Notestine. That means the district could miss up to two days at the elementary level and five at the middle- and high-school level before needing to add instructional days in May.

The Anchorage district’s calendar includes 172 instructional days, meaning schools don’t have to make up first two weather-related school closure days of the year.

Anchorage district officials have said that historically, when “emergency days” exceeded two in a given year, they could make up instructional time in various ways including converting one of 10 in-service days to an instructional day; longer school days for several days or weeks; adding days to the end of the school year; or converting vacation days to instruction days.