The icy weather that closed Mat-Su Valley schools this week might add extra school days to the school calendar, due to a recent policy change.
When Covid-19 closed schools in 2020, the Mat-Su Borough School District quickly responded with remote learning. With remote learning, students could log in from their homes and be taught through the platform Zoom. After students returned to school, at the end of the pandemic, remote learning remained as a learning option. It was used for those days when school was closed, due to poor weather conditions.
Until last week, remote learning was counted as a day in session for students. This meant no extra days were required to be added to the school calendar. According to Alaska state law, the school term in Alaska is 180 days long, with 10 days reserved for in-services and other events. If school closures result in less than 170 days of school, those days must be made up.
The current Alaska State Commissioner is Deena Bishop. Last week Bishop said that the education department is reconsidering whether to count “e-learning” due to unanticipated school closures, toward the minimum number of instructional days required by state law.
Bishop made the comments during a state board of education meeting, the same day that some Anchorage School and Mat-Su schools participated in remote learning due to poor road conditions.
Bishop said that weather-related school closures were part of a broader problem of increasing school absences. She indicated that absenteeism might be a factor in students’ underperformance in school.
Bishop sent a letter on Dec. 7th to school superintendents indicating that remote learning days should not be expected to count as school days. The response from the Mat-Su School District was swift. They announced that remote learning days are no longer an option for bad weather.
It’s likely that students celebrated this week when school was canceled due to icy roads. Rather than log in to the classroom in the morning, they were granted a day off. Students may not be celebrating in the spring however, when they find that the school term ends a few days later than expected.
