The Board of Education, at its recent March meeting, approved a memorandum that outlines the district’s protocols in the event that the designated emergency closure days are exhausted. The district set aside four emergency closure days for the 2024-25 school year, and has since used three of those designated days.
As a reminder, emergency closure days may be necessitated by any significant weather event, or other emergency such as power or utility failure. If additional emergency closures are necessary beyond the four allowable days designated for the 2024-25 school year, remote learning days will be offered so the school meets the state’s required 180 student attendance days. Remote learning day programs would be tailored to different grade levels.
For grades K-6, teachers would send home a “snow day” packet with students in advance, which would also be posted to Schoology/Google Classroom. Teachers would also conduct two half-hour online office hour sessions. The district will ensure that Google Meet is turned on for elementary students should a remote learning day be needed.
In grades 7-12, teachers would post lessons to Schoology/Google Classroom and the day would operate according to a two-hour delay bell schedule. Teachers would be available via Google Meet for office hours, designating 15 minutes for each class. Schedules would be provided to each student.
School nurses, counselors, occupational therapists, physical therapists, psychologists, and other staff would be available for designated “office hours” to answer parent/guardian questions or to meet one-on-one with students online as needed. These hours would be posted on the district website.
K-12 special area teachers (physical education, art, music, FACS, technology, LMS, etc.) would post lessons to Schoology/Google Classroom and would be available for designated “office hours” to answer parent/guardian questions and/or to meet 1:1 with students online as needed. These hours would be posted on the District website.
Resource Teachers would provide materials, lessons, and activities to support students’ educational needs and IEP goals. Providers will develop activities for students to participate in while school is in remote instruction. These activities will be designed with the students’ IEP in mind and will be individualized to address specific skill deficits.
Students in OCM BOCES programs would follow the process that OCM BOCES establishes. The BOCES administration and staff would communicate information as needed.
Student attendance would be taken by submission of the completed work either by the end of the school day and/or by the next in-session school day (grades K-5). The expectation is that each lesson/assignment should take a student no more than 10 minutes to complete.
Further details will be posted to the district website if the fourth available emergency closure day is used, to prepare for potential remote learning days.