KSBA eNews Service, Frankfort, Sept. 12, 2016
Bell Co., Boyle Co. superintendents share experiences of having instruction take place during bad weather or flu season
By Brad Hughes
Lawmakers were told Monday that Kentucky’s experiment with enabling schools to have instructional options when weather or other factors cancel a regular class day is going extremely well.
Members of the General Assembly’s Interim Joint Committee on Education received a statewide update and local insights on the Kentucky Department of Education’s NTI (nontraditional instruction) pilot program that began with five districts in 2011 and has grown to 72 systems for the 2016-17 year.
Wolfe County Schools Superintendent Kenny Bell, whose district was one of the original five in the program, extolled the benefits to maintaining teaching and learning.
“When you’ve missed 25 or 30 days in Wolfe County, you’ve got a summer slide twice,” Bell said. “We’ve been a high progress district. Without this program, there is absolutely no way that that would have happened.”
Bell testified that questions about how the program would work in the first year have disappeared.
“I can tell you in the last three years I’ve had not one negative comment from a parent, teacher or student in Wolfe County about the program,” he said. “We met a lot of needs. We delivered 500 meals to families, we delivered water to homes with frozen lines. All of those helped with barriers to learning.
“I had a child in the second grade. On Friday a storm was coming in and it looked like we would be out of school much of the next week. We sent out the alert to get kids ready. My child went home on Friday, took the same test she would have taken as if they had been in school. I checked and they actually did better than (on a similar test) given on a regular school day,” Bell said.
Boyle County Schools Superintendent Mike LaFavers had similar positive testimony about using the NTI option in his district since 2014-15.
“We don’t have to shorten our calendar. In 2013-14 (before NTI), we had to (amend) the calendar to 165 days (due to snow days). Now we keep it to 172 days,” LaFavers said, adding that attendance on NTI days has exceeded the average for regular in-school days.
And LaFavers called the NTI option an “incubator” for ideas.
“It allows you to see what digital learning looks like, to engage the kids in critical thinking activities,” he said. “You hear about learning ‘any time, any where’ – well, you are modeling that with NTI.”
David Cook, director of innovation and partner engagement at KDE, told legislators how the program has grown, both in terms of participation and use of the option. Districts can use up to 10 NTI days, but the actual use varies.
“This past year, two districts didn’t use any days, eight districts used all 10 of their days and (there was) everything in between. There’s really not a specific way to do it. Some boards have said at the beginning of the year, ‘We’re only going to take this many NTI days and we’ll make up the other days,’” he said.
Last year, 94 percent of students in the 44 participating districts turned in the required assignments, while 99 percent of involved teachers provided work logs and other instructional proof of activities.
“They provide us with a wealth of information on how they will enact and implement the program. Districts in the program must give us information on how they will improve or enhance it,” Cook said. “We look at teacher logs and know the kinds of interactions between teachers and students. Teachers will tell you these 10 days are tougher than other days because of the requirement to provide evidence of what happened.” KDE also conducts site visits to interview teachers, students and parents about NTI.
“The No. 1 thing teachers will tell you is that when you miss five days of instruction in a Kentucky school district in the winter, you actually miss about seven, because it takes two days when you return for everybody to really get back into that learning mode. But when we do nontraditional instruction in that five day period – it doesn’t matter whether that’s two days out of the five or all five – the teachers will tell you without exception ‘When my kids come back to school, they are ready to learn when they walk back through the doors,’” said Cook.
One downside for the initiative is that the federal government doesn’t permit reimbursement for food service on an NTI day. Owsley County is the only school in a very limited federal pilot program allowing such days to count for funding.
“Districts providing meals for students who can make it to school are doing that on their own, so they are taking a hit on that. We’re hopeful that this program will be expanded, but right now folks like Mr. Bell are doing in on their own dime,” Cook said.
Both Bell and LaFavers testified that they have been able to work out arrangements so that all employees are still able to fulfill work requirements and be paid for their full employment contracts throughout the year.