Should NC schools use more remote days for bad weather?

A bill moving forward in the state legislature would let public schools around the state use even more remote instructional days for inclement weather, rather then scheduling in-person makeup days.

State law allows schools to schedule as many as five remote days for snow storms, hurricanes or other events that cause power outages, blocked roads or other reasons to close schools.

House Bill 1026 would boost that to as many as eight days. If a school district had already used five remote learning days, but then later needs more, the bill would allow as many as three more days to be scheduled for remote instruction.

In many school districts including the state's largest, Wake County Public Schools, remote instruction doesn't mean a day of classes over video calls. Rather, it might be that schools send home assignments to be completed on a student's own time, usually brief and only covering old material.

Some parents like remote days because they get more time with their children on a snow day, for example, and also don't have to risk driving, or putting their kids on a school bus, in potentially dangerous conditions. Other parents dislike remote days because they have to rearrange their work schedules or take time off they hadn't budgeted for, or scramble to find last-minute childcare.

It hasn’t been voted on yet but passed an education committee in the state House of Representatives on Tuesday. Lawmakers said school leaders requested the changes after the two back-to-back storms in January that covered much of the state in snow or ice for days at a time.

"We had three inches of ice, which compacted in low temperatures," Rep. Larry Potts, R-Davidson, said. "We couldn't melt the ice, we got 12 inches of snow, and we used up all of our remote days. So it put us in a situation where we've been going to school longer in the afternoon."

He added that simply making every school day slightly longer, to meet the legal requirements for hours spent in class, doesn't seem like the best option for the future: "We need to be prepared if it happens again."