Blizzard Bag Discussion Begins - Will We Have Alternative Learning Time Assignments This Year?

At last evening's School Committee Meeting we began discussing the possibility of once again allowing students to complete assignments outside of school and having these assignments count for days missed due to extensive absences due to snow or other unforeseen circumstances. This initiative, which we called Blizzard Bags last year, was piloted across our district after receiving the go-ahead from our School Committee. 

The two slideshows below highlight the survey results of parents and staff members who responded. We had 221 staff members respond and 444 parents. Whether you responded or not, there is still time to provide your comments on this initiative and let us know whether you would like to see something similar in the future. This topic will be on the School Committee Agenda once again at our next School Committee Meeting on October 13. 

Nearly 70-percent of our parents would approve of a similar undertaking if the assignments were given on the day that their students miss school while over 90-percent of teachers also would support alternative learning assignments if they were structured differently from last year.

Due to this feedback on the surveys, we are certain the the following changes would be made if we continue with a similar undertaking this year:

• The initiative will be called something other than Blizzard Bags since there are no bags involved and we could potentially miss school for something other than snow.
• The assignments will be given on the day that school is missed (not afterwards as we did last year). In addition, the students would receive a brief window to complete the work and it would not be expected immediately upon return to school.

Please feel free to comment here in the comment section if you have questions or input that you would like to add to this discussion. We look forward to a decision on whether or not we will implement alternative assignments during our October School Committee Meetings.