In the near future, a snowy day may not translate into a day away from schoolwork.
Soon, Pennsylvania’s schools may be allowed to give out school assignments students can do at home on days when school buildings are closed due to heavy snowfall or other issues.
State lawmakers have approved a bill that would allow school districts to have five flexible instruction days each year. The state House of Representatives passed the bill Monday. The measure now goes to Gov. Tom Wolf.
Under the bill, schools could use the flexible days for closures due to weather, building repairs or, grimly, threats made to schools. The bill could allow school districts to avoid delaying the end of the school year to make up for snow days, a sticky issue for families planning vacations or graduation parties.
State Sen. Kristin Phillips-Hill, a York County Republican, sponsored the bill and said it helps schools keep kids on track.
“School districts need the added flexibility of ensuring their students’ continuity of education is not interrupted by the weather or any other unplanned school closure,” Phillips-Hill said in a statement.
It’s unclear if the governor will sign the bill. An inquiry sent to the governor’s press office late Monday afternoon wasn’t immediately returned.
Still, the state Department of Education has conducted a pilot program over the last three years with several school districts, including Central York and Red Lion.
School districts wouldn’t be compelled to offer flexible instruction days. The bill would allow public schools, charter schools and parochial schools to apply for permits from the education department to have flexible instruction days. The permits would be valid for three years.
Last September, Central York School District Superintendent Michael Snell told PennLive the flexible day experiment met with “rave reviews” from teachers and parents. The district planned ahead to use a flexible day when there was a snowy day in the forecast.
For children in kindergarten through third grade, teachers had them take home books and gave them math work they could do at home. In the upper grades, the teachers loaded assignments into computers so students who didn’t have internet service at home could download them before they went home the day before.
Some rural areas of Pennsylvania don’t have adequate internet coverage, a fact Phillips-Hill has previously acknowledged. But she said the results of the pilot program show schools across the commonwealth would welcome the option of instruction days for kids even if they can’t get to their school building.
“Based on the responses from the districts that were enrolled in the program, there is no doubt that this option should be made available to each and every school district in York County and across the state,” she said in a statement.
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