Following guidance from Alaska Education Commissioner Deena Bishop, the Anchorage School District will do away with remote learning days popularized during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bishop said the state’s Department of Education and Early Development is considering a policy change that would not count remote learning days toward the required 170 school days.
In an email to parents Thursday, Superintendent Jharrett Bryantt said that the district would reinstate school closures during inclement weather rather than asking students to complete school work from home.
“For the next two incidents of inclement weather which preclude normal operations, the district will implement school closures with no expectation of remote learning. These two days are already built into the calendar and will not require make-up days,” Bryantt wrote. “Should additional closures be necessary beyond the two designated closure days, students will make up the lost instructional time. Instructional days will be added to the calendar by repurposing current non-student days and/or adding days to the end of the school calendar.”
Bryantt said the shift was made in part to prioritize safety. Anchorage has not seen significant snow volume this winter. Last winter, a series of early winter storms caused Anchorage school administrators to cancel a week of in-person classes. The school board voted to extend the school day for over a month of the second semester to make up for lost instructional time.
During a meeting of the Alaska Board of Education and Early Development earlier this month, Bishop said she saw remote learning days as a contributing factor to the epidemic of chronic absenteeism plaguing schools across the country.
“We want to rethink what we're doing when we cancel schools,” Bishop said. “I looked at the data, and we had some school districts having upwards of 10 to 14 e-learning days due to bad weather. Those are absolutely missed learning days in school, from what we've learned.”
Anchorage follows the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District, who moved to abandon remote learning days last week. Bishop said that a key indicator of student success is their physical presence in the classroom.
“It really sets our students and our parents up not to be successful sometimes, because a lot of times, the parents can't be home the same day that school is an e-learning day, if you will, to stay home with their kids to count that as a school day,” she said.
Bishop said during the meeting that nearly 45% of Alaska students qualified as chronically absent during the 2022-2023 school year, meaning they missed at least 10% of school days. Bishop said Alaska ranks second in chronic absenteeism nationally, only trailing Alabama.
