By Per Peterson
While many students are already counting down the days until the end of another school year, the official school calendar has taken on some subtle changes.
The District No. 2904 School Board approved amending the 2017-18 school calendar at Monday’s board meeting.
Tracy Area High School Supt. Chad Anderson said Monday that the school has had three missed days and eight late starts due to inclement weather this school year. According to the original board-approved calendar, all the snow days would be made up, with the last day of school coming on May 24. However, Anderson proposed making up one of the three snow days with the students on May 25 (the last day of school); May 29 would be used for ALICE (Alert, Lockdown Inform, Counter, Evacuate) training for school staff, and May 30 would be an E-Learning training day, where teachers would learn all about E-Leaning in preparation for the next school year when the program would be implemented.
The premise behind an E-Learning Day (or Digital Learning Day) is having students work online from home. Anderson said teachers would be at their computers on an E-Learning day — either at their home or on campus — and available to answer students’ questions. Students can access the teachers online while they work on their homework.
Students would have the E-Learning day (plus one additional day) to complete assignments and would be expected to complete assigned work in a timely manner. Parents would be expected to contact their child’s teacher if there are extenuating circumstances that prohibit your child from completing the assignment satisfactorily.
Elementary students would complete various learning activities from home.
For more on this article, see this week’s Headlight-Herald.