Local schools choose not to use remote learning
Schools in Belmont County have the option to submit a remote learning plan to the state — an option that other Ohio Valley school districts are using now that snow days are piling up — but most of them chose not to because of the complications it could cause.
Snow days work by schools obtaining a certain number of hours (or days) over the minimum number of hours required to be in school. In Ohio, it is 1,001 hours minimum a year for grades 7-12. Schools could opt for remote learning on days they are closed, but Belmont County schools do not.
Schools will take how many days they are in school for a year, multiply it by how many hours they are in school for a day and get the number of hours of calamity days the district has over the 1,00-hour minimum.
Shadyside Local School District has 18 days over the minimum number of hours that it can use for snow days.
Shadyside High School is in school for six hours and 15 minutes a day and 178 days a year.
Shadyside Superintendent John Haswell said no school in the county other than the Belmont County Career Center does remote learning.
Haswell said he decided against remote learning because getting the entire staff into school, and conducting Zoom calls with students, can be difficult. Remote learning can also cause problems with parents who don’t have daycare, Haswell added, which makes remote learning impractical.
Schools cannot go below the 1,001-hour minimum, or else they must make up the hours. Haswell said that, if inclement weather cancels too many school days, Shadyside schools would possibly take time off of spring break or whatever plan is decided upon when Haswell discusses the plan with the teacher’s union.
“We finally had a winter,” Haswell said. “I mean, we have not had a winter.”
Schools also no longer use blizzard bags, packets with school lessons students can complete at home. A budget bill made changes to Ohio’s calamity day statute, according to the Ohio Department of Education, and the bill replaced the use of blizzard bags in October 2023.
Union Local School District Zac Shutler said that remote learning didn’t make sense for the district for this school year. He said Zoom meetings were ineffective with many students, especially elementary students, and that it wouldn’t be beneficial for the district.
Shutler noted his district must consider whether all students have internet access on remote learning days, how attendance is taken and how to make sure teachers are online at the same time as students. He added that the district will revisit remote learning for the 2025-26 school year.
Shutler and his staff watch the weather forecast and communicate with the Ohio Department of Transportation to see what it anticipates about road conditions.
“We’re transporting students on buses that don’t always do super well in snow and icy conditions,” Shutler said. “We have upwards of 75, 80 students on those buses at our high school level, we have a lot of students that drive the school. And then we also have acres worth of campus that we have to maintain and salt and clear. So there’s so many of those factors that determine whether we think it’s going to be an effective and safe day to go to school.”
Shutler added that keeping students safe and making sure they get to school is the district’s top priority before the school even gets into the learning process.
Shutler said Union Local School District is already looking at possible plans for making up school days.
“It’s only mid-January, so it’s a lot tighter than it’s been in the past,” he said. “I mean, in the past four or five years, we were lucky to have five, six snow days per year, so it hasn’t been much of a concern lately. But this year, we have to already start devising plants to make up for the time.”
Shutler said one of the simplest things the district could do when making up days is adding 10 or 15 minutes to the school day, which would allow the school to accrue some days, especially if it started early, such as in March.
St. Clairsville Schools also have several days over the minimum. Superintendent Walter Skaggs said he, Director of Support Services Lowell Perkins and Assistant Director of Support Services Ray Laudermilt go out to drive on the roads and parking lots to see how they are before deciding to close for the day. A level two or three emergency, and sometimes a level one emergency, calls for an automatic cancellation, Skaggs said.
“The ultimate goal is to do whatever is safest for our kids,” Skaggs said. “We don’t want to put a lot of our kids in jeopardy. So it’s easy to defend when somebody says, ‘Why’d you cancel school?’ What if something would have happened? I sure would have regretted it if so.”
Bridgeport Exempted Village School District Superintendent Brent Ripley and Transportation Director Dave Lewis go out on the roads in the morning to determine if they’re safe or not.
The school also opts for a two-hour delay when there is a threat of snow coming its way but cancels if the snow hits hard.
“It’s not just the road conditions, but it’s also trying to get our school site ready, the parking lot, the sidewalks, making sure we have aggregate down to minimize any potential slips or falls,” Ripley said. “So there’s a whole gambit of information we bounce off of one another.”
Bridgeport decided not to do the remote learning option either because families that don’t have internet, the district would have to purchase internet for them, and financially, it can’t sustain that, Ripley said. Ripley noted the district is good on snow days, having quite a few left.
He also said the district takes a lot into consideration when determining a snow day, such as if students will be able to eat at home or families having to miss work.
“I’m praying and hoping that the weather subsides a little bit so we can get back to some normalcy here,” he said. “Because so far, we’ve had six snow days here at Bridgeport. You know, I don’t know exactly what everyone else has had, but in my book, for the past two years, I don’t think we use six snow days in either of the past two years. When you look at it, it’s safety first.”