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A school board in South Carolina has launched a pilot program to get rid of snow days and instead have students work from home when the weather turns treacherous. Beyond depriving schoolkids of the joys of weather-enforced truancy, the plan will exacerbate the region's digital divide for student who don't have internet access at home.
Anderson County School District Five will be the first region to participate in the pilot program this upcoming school year. In the past, Anderson County had makeup days tacked on to the end of the school year in lieu of days missed due to bad weather, but most kids ended up just skipping them, according to a local news report.
Students from grades 3 through 12 in the school board are already given Chromebooks to use at home, so in the event of a snow day or other inclement weather that causes a shutdown, kids will be expected to log on from home, communicate with teachers, and complete assignments.
Source: MotherBoard
(Score: 5, Interesting) by sjames on Saturday August 04 2018, @11:18PM (9 children)
A funny thing about snow days though. If it's mild, kids miss a day at most. If it's more severe, they'll have quite a time using their chromebooks after trees have taken out the power and cable broadband.
Perhaps what is really needed is for school officials to get over themselves and quit wasting so much time during the existig school year.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @11:36PM (8 children)
> after trees have taken out the power and cable broadband
This story is about South Carolina.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 04 2018, @11:40PM (5 children)
There's some pretty damned tall trees in SC. An 80' pine wasn't remotely rare around the Charleston suburbs when I lived there.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by requerdanos on Sunday August 05 2018, @12:29AM (4 children)
And what happens is that the trees grow lots of nice branches. When ice comes, the ice freezes to the tree's branches, making them much, much heavier. The tree, or large, frozen-together portions of it, then fall, taking out the power, cable, broadband, whatever's on the nearby utility poles.
This has happened to me in both North and South Carolina. The less dense the population in your area, the slower they come to repair it.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday August 05 2018, @02:37AM (3 children)
Well aware of this. I was in Charleston when Hugo came through, so I got intimately acquainted with what kind of trees were around. They're much easier to inspect when they're laying sideways on your neighbor's house. GP appeared to be insinuating that there weren't any respectable trees to speak of in SC, which would be horribly incorrect.
Oklahoma also gets really nasty ice storms every five years or so and I lived in a little podunk town that was pretty low on the utility company's priority list. This is where having a wood burning stove in your shop building comes in really, really handy.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 05 2018, @01:49PM (2 children)
I was insinuating that they don't have any respectable snowfall—something you insinuated in another comment.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Sunday August 05 2018, @07:02PM (1 child)
The snowfall, light sometimes, heavy others, does in fact not get much respect from snow snobs.
I first held a snow shovel at age 36 because I was visiting a friend in Chicago. This is a win. Game, set, and match.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 06 2018, @10:53AM
That is indeed a win. Fuck Beta^WSnow!
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday August 06 2018, @12:14AM
And my post was due to long experience living in Georgia (one state to the south for the geographically challenged). We either get light snow that's gone in a day or we get about a weeks worth of ice accompanied by downed trees and associated power loss.
The former isn't enough disruption to the school year to fret over (since it happens less than once a year) and the latter, as I pointed out, will see many students UNABLE to log in from home (and a few more who will SAY they were unable).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 06 2018, @12:58PM
Are you suggesting SC doesn't have trees or above ground power lines?
Because I can assure you they have a lot of both.