Dr Darrell Echols, Principal

Can you explain what e-learning is?

“When we typically have a snow day, we don’t have school on that day, and then we add that day to the end of the calendar. So part of the issue is parents make travel plans, teachers make travel plans, you need to have done that stuff in advance, to save money on the flight, and the hotel and all that kind of stuff. So one of the things that we’ve looked at, and some other districts have experimented with, is E-learning days. The teachers send out some content via Google Classroom for students to do during the day, so it gives kids something to do during the day. At the same time, it eliminates us from having to add a day to the end of the calendar.”

What adversities do you think you will have to overcome to make this a smooth transition?

“Well, we have a committee that’s working right now on some guidelines in terms of how much work and content should teachers be putting out. For example, let’s say, I’m at home and I don’t have power. I found out we got a snow day, I’m a teacher, and I can’t put out content. So, we’re trying to come up with some procedures. We don’t want it to be punitive for kids; we want it to be enriching.”

When are you starting this program?

“It’s going to happen this year; it’s been board approved. So we’re going to try it this year, so in other words, if you’re a student who has travel plans two days after the last day of school, you should be able to make that flight without any issues.”