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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: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 05 2018, @05:11AM
That's the thing now isn't it? In areas that typically get enough snow for this to be a possible problem, they tend to have snow plows and the like to clear things up in order to get back to classes promptly. Perhaps there's a significant blizzard from time to time that causes snow days, but typically it's a non-issue. You might start a bit late, but that's it.
There are places like Seattle where it rarely snows and when it does snow you have to deal with both the hills and unknown type of snow, but typically even here it's rare to have enough snow that it's an issue. There are extra days added to the schedule to account for that. And in rare cases the schedule of the year can be extended to meet the required days of instruction.
Let the kids have a day or two to enjoy the snow, it's not like they're going to be kids forever and if this even comes up, they probably don't have many chances to enjoy snow.