By Matt Pedigo

With Allen County becoming one of many Kentucky school districts now utilizing home lesson plans for snow days, a test is planned for the upcoming Election Day four-day weekend.

In addition to the normal weekend, students will be out of school on Tuesday, Nov. 8 for Election Day, plus Monday, Nov. 7 for a teacher professional development day. Administrators saw the four-day window as a good opportunity to test the district’s new “non-traditional” instruction.

Superintendent of Instruction Rick Fisher said that, rather than a district-wide test, this experiment will be limited to students in grades four through eight. As this is only a system test, it will not affect grades. Students will have instructions for logging onto the District’s website, allen.kyschools.us, looking for the “Non-traditional Instruction” heading under the Google Classroom icon. There, after logging into their particular classroom, they will find a video and a question about it. Students log in, and can electronically “sign” their work. This lets administrators know who could and could not get there.

The District is aware that many students may have no web access at home; in a real use of the system, those students will be given hard-copy paper workbook-style packets to take home.

The test will allow administrators to get an idea of how many students will need the paper packets, and how many will be able to complete their tasks online. Fisher noted that other districts that have started the snow-day instruction earlier have typically been seeing about a 50/50 split between the need for paper packets and students being able to do the digital work.

Following the lead of several other districts across the state, Allen County Board of Education adopted the system in June as a means of cutting back on make-up days that could cut into families’ summer vacation time in the summer, or student summer job schedules, for examples. Fisher and other administrators are quick to say that this is not intended to replace school attendance and classroom learning.

“We won’t start using this until after the fifth lost day,” Fisher noted, adding that teachers have been asked to design five days’ worth of lessons. “We can’t replace the classroom and teacher. We’re going to use this as a safety net so we’re not in school until June 7.”

The Kentucky Department of Education agrees—its regulations only allow districts to use the non-traditional lessons in lieu of a maximum of 10 missed days. If a given district misses 20 snow days, it will have to make up at least 10 of them.

“Our goal is to be finished (with each school year) by Memorial Day,” Fisher added.

Whereas the digital work will include videos and links to online tutorial material, the printed copies will include a few paragraphs of material instructions and explanation, followed by the lessons.

“Every kid will have access to pencil and paper,” Fisher said. “The digital is just easier to manage.”

The inability of many students to gain access to the web-based lessons may also be larger than is currently knowns. As Fisher points out, many parents may say, “no problem—we’ve got internet service,” but then find out that their DSL speed or dial-up plan isn’t sufficient to play videos, for example. If those parents can’t or don’t wish to upgrade their web service or browsers at this time, their children can get the paper packets.

“We want to encourage everyone to give it a try,” Fisher said.

For multi-day cancellations, the packets and digital content will be marked “Day One,” “Day Two,” etc., and the lessons aren’t designed to take all day. In fact, students can work ahead if they wish, and have more free time later in their snow days.

“We don’t expect kids to spend six hours on a snow day doing school work,” Fisher said. “Kids need to get out and play in the snow.”

When the system is fully implemented, it will be for all grades, kindergarten through 12, though only grades four through 12 will have the digital version. Allen County Primary Center kindergarten through third-grade students will all use the paper packets. The Primary student packets will focus on the basics: Reading, writing and math, while the later grades will have other more advanced core subject areas.

For some days when weather doesn’t warrant a full day out, the District will still be using its recently implemented return to one and two-hour delays when needed. The non-traditional instruction will not be implemented in those cases.