The use of ‘Alternative Structured Learning Days’ (what we know as “Blizzard Bag Days”) has engendered much interest across the Commonwealth to help alleviate making up weather-related school cancellations in late June. For the first time the joint Massachusetts Association of School Committees (MASC) and the Massachusetts Association of Superintendents (MASS) put a session on Blizzard Bags into their scheduled meetings, for which I was asked to be one of the four panel presenters.
The panel makeup was very well rounded: myself and the Superintendent of the Westfield Public Schools, a school committee member from the City of Melrose and a school committee member and parent from the Orange Elementary School District. This allowed for a range of implementation strategies, success stories, modifications made over time and how the programs are run. There was a good turnout of individuals in the session and many thought-provoking questions for the panel.
It is interesting to note some differences in how blizzard bags are done in each district including the number of days (this ranged from 3 to an unlimited amount), when they were to be implemented (starting and counting from the first cancellation to not beginning until after the five ‘built-in’ snow days were used), how staff were considered to be working on those days, and the potential savings (only Gateway had a specific savings amount calculated for these days). A universal theme was the idea that parents, students and staff seemed to be much more supportive of blizzard bags as the programs went on, operational questions were answered, and everyone became used to the idea. While everyone was interested in seeing digital blizzard bag assignments, almost everyone is using a mix of electronic and paper assignments due to either the lack of broadband access or the lack of a one-to-one laptop program.
Attendees shared several common questions and concerns, including whether or not the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) is considering changes to state policy (at this point it is the decision of each district’s school committee as to whether the alternative assignments are rigorous enough to count for a day of school). I believe part of this issue revolves around how students on learning plans (504 and IEP) are getting appropriate services as outlined in their individual plans. It appeared that every school represented on the panel has positively addressed this issue although not necessarily in an identical fashion. It was also interesting that each school system provided the opportunity to customize assignments based upon student needs. The idea of children being able to just enjoy their snow day was also brought up and it appeared that Gateway’s five school day assignment window was the best way to ensure that work for that day could be done over a weekend if students didn’t want to do the assignment on the actual day of cancelled classes.
Gateway allows each teacher, grade level or team to develop their blizzard bag assignments, so some might be project based while others are related to what a staff member is covering at the time of the snow day. Unlike Gateway, the other schools seemed to have a more proscribed idea of what blizzard bag assignments should look like with the commonality being some sort of project-based assignment. This led some districts to approve their blizzard bag assignments at the same time while others reviewed assignments throughout the year. The common area was some sort of review to ensure that assignments were rigorous enough to meet DESE’s standards.
There seemed to be a general agreement that nothing can replace the interactions between a teacher and their students in the classroom but that the effort in maintaining student engagement in late June, in hot classrooms, and well past the planned last day of the school year was very difficult, and therefore a well constructed blizzard bag process was an excellent alternative. It will be interesting to see if blizzard bags continue to be supported by the DESE and whether other districts will implement the idea in the future.
