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In the Owsley County School District in Kentucky, each winter there are more than 30 days when there'due south too much snow to get students to school safely.

So the district, located in a rural area south of the Daniel Boone National Forest, pioneered virtual school in the winter several years ago, getting students to hang up sleds and log online for classes on snowfall days. Although many remote areas of the land lack admission to loftier-speed Cyberspace service, that is not a problem in this commune. Just some students do non have computers at home.

"The adjacent problem is how exercise we go devices to the most needy kids," said superintendent Tim Bobrowski. "Nosotros work in a very impoverished area — that'south a claiming."

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More schools are considering the options for virtual schoolhouse when teachers or students cannot get to school. A new airplane pilot in Pennsylvania was approved by this twelvemonth. A schoolhouse commune in Georgia recently approved plans to offer lessons online when at that place is as well much snow to open school buildings.

School snow days
A adult female walks along a snow-covered street in the south Buffalo area on Thursday, Nov. xx, 2014, in Buffalo, N.Y. A new nail of lake-outcome snow pounded Buffalo for a tertiary twenty-four hour period piling more misery on a city already buried past an epic, deadly snow that could leave some areas with almost 8 anxiety of snow on the basis when information technology's all washed. (AP Photograph/Mike Groll)

The experiences of those who accept already tried virtual school days show that information technology'south not as like shooting fish in a barrel as it might seem to offer a meaningful education in this format. But some of the early on adopters, such as Owsley County, didn't permit the dubiousness end them. They saw each obstacle as a problem to solve, non an excuse to quit.

In New Bailiwick of jersey, state lawmakers are considering a bill that would allow virtual school days to count toward the mandatory 180-day schoolhouse twelvemonth. Correct now, the law says that school days don't count if the buildings are not open.

"It is an outdated police force," said superintendent Erik Gundersen of the Pascack Valley Regional High School District in northeast New Jersey.

That has encouraged his relatively wealthy district to try a pilot program. Fewer than 10 of the 2,000 students had no Internet access at habitation, so that wasn't a problem. Besides, the commune has an xi-year-old program that gives students admission to a school-owned computer that they tin take dwelling house. Teachers take been using a variety of online learning programs so that students can work remotely on lessons. The teachers will shortly move to i, unified system, which should help students considering they won't have to learn a new program for each teacher.

It was skillful to experiment first, Gundersen said, to give the district an informed perspective on what worked all-time.

"Information technology'due south ane of the things nosotros pride ourselves in, giving our teachers some freedom," Gundersen said.

Gundersen said state officials see the value in this concept, and many are amenable to changing the law. Recently proposed legislation would allow the days to count.

In Kentucky's Owsley County, schools this yr volition exist allowed to have up to x days of calm learning, which will count every bit regular schools days and not have to be made upwardly in the summer.

Some other regulation there has been a hurdle for the virtual snow days. The federal laws that provide money to give students meals don't allow for dwelling house food delivery. Students must come to the school or to a community center to get breakfast and tiffin – something that is common in summer, simply not feasible on a snowfall twenty-four hours when the roads are dicey. Going without meals isn't a expert thought either, Bobrowski said, and nearly every kid in the commune qualifies for free or reduced toll meals.

"When students here leave on Friday they are taking bags of food habitation from us to get them through on the weekend," he said.

Ideally, Bobrowski would like to make those federal school diet dollars count toward meals that are delivered to students at home on a snow 24-hour interval. The commune has requested a waiver from federal officials to allow that.

"At that place are a lot of days when by 10 a.thou. the roads are good," he said. "Let's serve lunch and supper, versus breakfast and lunch."

These issues need to exist solved, simply they are not halting progress on the snowfall day programme, Bobrowski said. An improvement they plan to make next twelvemonth is to create a mini-form that would take place during the month's worth of snow days. This would be an actress class, such as an online grade in fine art or information science, for example. Preparing for these virtual classes requires extra teacher preparation.

"Selling that idea is sometimes tough, just I retrieve most of our teachers like information technology," Bobrowski said.

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Nichole Dobo is a national writer for The Hechinger Written report and she manages audition engagement strategy. She has more than than 15 years of experience writing nearly teaching and learning. Her work has been...