Also, I’ve received questions around how
non-planned
no school days/late starts/early outs work with our school calendar and what the impact would be if we adopted E-Learning Days in future school years.
Each closure/late start/early out means lost instructional hours for our students.
The State of Iowa requires that school districts either choose a minimum 1080 hours of instruction per year or 180 days of instruction per year. Note that this change (allowing districts to choose) happened in 2014 and the majority of districts including Forest City chose hours.
Setting the school year calendar, with many guidelines and considerations, is a large task each year and I say this to:
- Recognize our calendar committee
- Share that it is complex
- State that we have limited days with the kids (other countries go to school 200-230 days as an example) and so our local practice is to make up days missed and ensure we meet the hours requirement. We believe this is a sound education practice.
So how does this E-Learning Day concept fit in? With the unpredictable Iowa winter weather and the number of days we’ve missed in recent years, a committee was formed with the goal of arriving at a solution to maintain academic consistency when school is not able to take place and to assist with the school year ending closer to the scheduled end date.
We have some additional hours built into our calendar to allow for late starts/early outs and other calendar impacts. We have enough room to allow up to three days—three days where some learning is occurring and teachers are available online.
Therefore, those declared “E-Learning Days” would not be added as make up days to the end of the school year. In short, we can meet our minimum hours requirement and still adhere to our education practice of making up other missed days of instruction. E-Learning Days can reduce the number of makeup days at the end of the year.
Thank you for your feedback!
Darwin Lehmann and E-Learning Day Committee
