RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — School systems across the Southeast are dealing with weather-related school closures for the second week in a row, leading some to try remote learning while many prepare to add more school days to make up for lost instructional time.
A series of winter storms has left tens of thousands of people without electricity and made some roads too icy for travel, complicating efforts to reopen schools from Mississippi to Maryland. Some cities, including Nashville, Tennessee, still had unresolved outages from a storm a week earlier when another hit this weekend, accompanied by frigid temperatures. Nearly 75,000 customers were without power in Mississippi and Tennessee as of Monday afternoon, according to the outage tracking website poweroutage.us.
In Belzoni, Mississippi, Chiquitta Fields has stayed in a hotel with her four children and 1-year-old grandchild the past week because their home lost power during the previous storm. She’s shelled out about $700 just to stay at the hotel — a necessity because her granddaughter needs to be on oxygen.
The financial burden has been especially stressful because Fields, 41, has been unable to work the past week in her job as an assistant elementary teacher. Her kids haven’t been exempt from that pressure either, Fields said.
“It’s been stressful for them, with the moving back and forth from one place and to another,” she said. “Children don’t adjust well when you do all that.”
As her family’s situation suggests, the decision to close schools for weather doesn’t go without complications for children’s learning.
Absenteeism from severe weather can take a steep toll on children’s learning, according to a report from the Northwest Evaluation Association, a not-for-profit education research firm. Missing a day of school from a weather-related closure translates to almost four days of lost learning time due to other exacerbating factors in a student’s personal life, the firm said. Those added challenges can range from disruptions to housing to poor mental health.
Where are schools closed?
Public school systems in and around some of the biggest southeastern cities — Atlanta, Charlotte, Memphis and Raleigh — are part of the wave of school closures this week. Other major Southern cities, such as Louisville, operated on a two-hour delay Monday after missing school last week.
In North Carolina, much of the state’s public school districts remained closed Monday, with some extending their closures to at least Tuesday. In Mississippi, one of the hardest-hit states in the latest storm, some school districts in the northern part of the state canceled classes through the rest of this week.
Power outages have also heavily contributed to school closures in cities such as Nashville. At the peak of outages, 71 schools had no power or partial service, according to a Metro Nashville Public Schools news release. All of the schools had their power restored by Monday afternoon.
Several major Southeastern universities were forced to close their campuses or cancel classes at least through Monday, including Ole Miss, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University, the University of South Carolina and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
How are schools making up for lost instructional time?
Some schools attempted a version of remote learning, but those efforts have been limited by power outages affecting students’ ability to work from home. In some cases, though, parents said their districts seemed well prepared to implement remote learning.
Olivia White’s children stayed home a couple days last week and then again Monday after Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools canceled classes. She found her kids’ remote schoolwork manageable, adding that the school system seemed understanding of how families may choose to spend their time on a snow day. In White’s case, her kids spent some time outside building a snow fort and throwing snowballs at each other.
In Memphis-Shelby County Schools, Tennessee’s largest public school system, schools will be closed for at least seven straight days come Tuesday. Despite the closures, the school system said it is providing daily instructional resources and learning packets for students to access at home while they remain out of the classroom.
Learning packets covered a variety of school subjects such as language arts, literacy, mathematics and social studies, depending on what grade a student is in. The at-home materials also include mental health activities for students broken up by age group — such as coloring for preschoolers or journal writing for high schoolers — to address what may be a distressing time for kids stuck at home.
Other school systems have opted for a more traditional snow day, telling students they have no schoolwork and should go out and enjoy the weather.
Regardless of how districts implement closures, many are considering whether to add more school days to make up for the lost instructional time. Metro Nashville Public Schools told parents in an email that the district plans to convert a teacher professional development on Presidents’ Day to a regular school day.
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Sophie Bates in Belzoni, Mississippi; Erik Verduzco in Charlotte, North Carolina; Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tennessee; Travis Loller in Nashville, Tennessee; and Gary Robertson in Raleigh, North Carolina, contributed to this report.
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