This year Milton Area School District is able to offer virtual snow days throughout the district.
According to Director of Secondary Education Mr. Andrew Rantz, a state bill was passed two years ago requiring secondary schools to provide a set number of hours of instructional time, as opposed to 180 instructional days.
“We have 1,077.53 total instructional hours built into our calendar. The required number of hours, according to PDE, for a secondary building is 990. That gives us 87.53 hours of flexibility,” Mr. Rantz said.
According to the state’s department of education website (pa.gov), a school may not exceed five FID (flexible instructional day) per school year, and a school must have its FID application accepted prior to using a FID each year.
“The school offers more instructional hours than the minimum required for the state. We have flexibility in what we would potentially do with snow days,” Mr. Rantz added. The school has the option to pivot to a virtual day or have the students not make up the closure at all if school closes, he said, as it did on Dec. 2.
The school is required to submit an FID (Flexible Instructional Day) Application to PDE (Pennsylvania Department of Education). Includes demographics and profile information, communication methods and other information, Mr. Rantz added.
The district does not have built in snow days in this year’s calendar, Mr. Rantz said. If Milton had to switch to a snow day, high school students would follow an asynchronous schedule on Canvas, he added. This would include going to each class on Canvas starting at 9 a.m. and having a short assignment which will be due at 3 p.m., he added.
The high school will also use the Rooms app and district email for students and guardians to contact teachers to ask questions or express concerns during a FID, Mr. Rantz said.
He said he hopes students can get all of their work on a virtual day done before 10 a.m. Middle school and elementary schools would look a bit different because most students do not always bring their devices home, Mr. Rantz added.
“Elementary (teachers) need to know for sure when a snow day will hit, so they can prepare for whatever it is that we are going to do,” he added.
According to Mr. Rantz, Milton Area School District received a lot of negative feedback from having many virtual days during the 2020- 21 school year. He added that most students, staff and families believe it is a hard way to learn, and there are many internet issues. Teachers found it hard to get students to sign in for class or use their cameras to track attendance, he explained.
Mr. Rantz said Milton’s only positive feedback was how quick the district was to adapt and how it had the proper technology for students to go online if needed.
“The whole concept is for kids to realistically be done early in the day, and then they can be a kid, enjoy the snow day, go outside, go sledding and have fun,” Mr. Rantz said.
