Photo Credit: 123rf
Better make sure your children have warm parkas and boots this winter. The Kansas City metropolitan area may have as many snow days this year as last, according to a forecast published yesterday by Scientific American:
Hopefully Kansas City area school boards and administrators have scheduled enough snow days into their schedules. Last year, children in most local districts spent extra days in school in late spring and early summer to make up for being snowbound earlier in the year.
Because El Nina, which affects weather patterns in the United States, is in roughly the same position as it was last year, Scientific American reports winter weather in 2011-2012 won’t differ much from what we experienced last year. The only slight difference is that they are predicting the worst will fall on Chicago and the upper Midwest rather than New York. Looking at their map of Winter Highlights, it appears that Kansas City is located just south of the area predicted to get the “Worst of Winter Cold & Snow.”
If children keep missing this many days due to dangerous winter weather, perhaps local districts could try what’s been done in other areas: online lessons on snow days. Here’s more information on a few schools that have experimented with just that:
http://www.psfk.com/2010/10/thanks-to-the-internet-no-snow-days-for-students-in-ohio.html
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/02/rutgers_prep_academy_students.html
http://k12smarterlearning.com/2011/03/snow-day-solutions/
And here’s an article published online by the Missouri State Teachers Association about whether online snow days could be offered legally (apparently the major issue is making sure all children have equal access to computers and internet connections in order to attend virtual school):
____________________________________
Read our Twitter feed for more education news from local, regional and national sources:http://twitter.com/#!/JW_Martinez
Discussion
No comments yet.