SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 06 2018, @02:54PM
Even in the central midwest that happens. We used to have a rule that if the rural school district closes our company would close that day. This would be both for safety and so our parent-employees wouldn't have to scramble to look for babysitters. The district rule was strictly on the opinion whether it was safe to have the buses on the streets and usually required either significant icing and/or blizzard-level snow that the plows couldn't keep up with. And that might result in a single day's loss ever other year. Now, if the temperature approaches 0 Farenheit they'll close because they're worried that kids might not have appropriate clothing to wait for the buses to arrive / what if a bus breaks down? One year we had four or so days like that plus two or three days where it actually wasn't safe to drive. (In my day, that was the parents' responsibility, and the school would help out poverty cases where they literally could not afford heavy clothes. But that was more Northerly than where I am now and you could rely on sub-zero temps for part of Winter). Now our company's rule is that is the post office ceases mail delivery or if a combination of hospitals cease all non-emergency activities and largest employer in town closes doors. It has to be worse than just the schools close down.