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 have left tens of thousands without electricity and made some roads too icy for travel, complicating efforts to reopen schools. 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 of paying for housing has been made 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 and some had extended 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 decided to cancel 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 Memphis-Shelby County Schools, the largest public school system in Tennessee, schools were closed for the sixth straight day on Monday. 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.
But regardless of how districts implement school closures, many are considering whether to add more school days to make up for the lost instructional time. In an email sent to parents from Metro Nashville Public Schools, the district plans to convert a teacher professional development day on Presidents Day to a regular school day.
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Sophie Bates in Belzoni, Mississippi, 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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