With another winter storm possibly on the horizon this weekend, New York City parents gave the school system’s attempt at virtual learning on Monday mixed reviews, with some saying it was a decent compromise, and others calling it a lesson in futility.
Jenny Groza in Ditmas Park said she and her 7-year-old son Leo struggled with technical glitches.
“It was really difficult to log in. It took us about 45 minutes,” she said, recalling how her WhatsApp parent group lit up with distress calls. “Leo was getting upset. He had a little meltdown because he felt bad that he was going to get in trouble for missing class … He had to go into his room for 15 minutes and decompress.”
Leo said he enjoyed introducing his pet gecko Spotty to his class once he logged on. But overall, “it was not as fun as I thought it would be.”
Their complaints were echoed by numerous parents who described remote learning as frustrating and performative. Some said teachers gave assignments like writing a poem about the snow, which allowed kids to leave early for artistic inspiration. Others recalled doing jumping jacks in a “virtual gym,” or meeting a teacher’s new baby.
Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels told reporters Monday that remote learning got off to a “smooth start,” with more than 400,000 students, parents and staff able to log on. But that meant some 100,000 other students either were unable to sign on or didn’t show up at all.
Nicole Brownstein, a spokesperson for the city’s education department, said public schools “experienced only minor hiccups” with remote logins. High school students and those in schools only serving grades six through 12 already had Monday off for teacher professional development.
A return to an old-fashioned snow day still appears unlikely due to legal requirements governing the school calendar – but that didn’t stop kids from getting outside.
Park Slope, Brooklyn, parent Aimee Fox said her daughter, in the 5th grade, had a morning meeting, followed by a writing assignment that took about an hour. She then spent three hours “gleefully sledding in the park.”
“Although her teachers did a great job of engaging students, it is far from an ideal way for students, especially neurodivergent ones, to learn,” Fox said.
She said her daughter, who typically loves school, was “not thrilled” with remote learning.
Officials have acknowledged that the tight school calendar packed with holidays has made it basically impossible to have traditional snow days.
In recent years, the city has added days off for Diwali, Eid, Lunar New Year, and Juneteenth, among others, making it difficult to meet the state mandate of 180 instructional days. Several years ago, city officials pushed to remove a little-known holiday called Brooklyn-Queens Day from the calendar to make room for the new cultural holidays, but the effort failed.
“I value the increase in culture and diversity in the school calendar and recognize that it has limited the DOE’s ability to have official snow days, but I hope for there to be more brainstorming on this issue in the future,” Fox said.
The school calendar has become an increasing challenge in an era of weather extremes and climate change. Over the past several years, there have been questions about whether the city should have canceled school due to wildfire smoke, floods and extreme heat. Last year, a new state law went into effect stating students can’t be in school facilities that surpass 88 degrees.
After the school system pivoted to remote learning during COVID-19, officials felt they had found a solution to the calendar conundrum. But Mayor Zohran Mamdani is among those who have lamented the loss of traditional snow days off from school.
When Mamdani announced that students would in fact be attending school remotely following the storm, he emphasized that he wasn’t ready to declare the snow day officially extinct.
“I will not tell you it’s the end of anything,” Mamdani said.
He said the city needed to keep school in session to fulfill the state mandate of 180 instructional days – for now.
“We will operate under the constraints that we have from the state, but we also acknowledge that those are constraints that could change at some point in the future,” he said. He added that students should feel free to throw a snowball at him to express their displeasure.
David Bloomfield, an education and law professor at Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center, called remote learning on snow days an “empty gesture.” But bringing snow days back would mean a major change to the school calendar.
“Since the city is unlikely to eliminate any of the many religious and legal holidays dotting the September to June school year, the only feasible reform is starting school before Labor Day, which is routine in the rest of the country, including big cities like LA, Chicago, and Houston,” Bloomfield said.
“The real culprit is the calendar. There used to be extra days built into the calendar to allow for snow days. That doesn’t exist anymore,” Bloomfield added.
The city’s contract with the powerful teachers’ union requires educators to receive two prep days after Labor Day to get their classrooms ready.
Labor Day comes late this year, on Sept. 7, creating an extra week to line up child care for the summer.
Cate Milos in Greenpoint said her 11-year-old son’s day was “a mixed bag.” He had no trouble logging into his eight periods of instruction, which were stacked “back to back.” Some classes, Milos said, were “a dream,” but others were “chaos.”
United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew pointed the finger at Google Classroom for any snafus with remote learning.
“Mayor Mamdani gets an A for his first snow day,” he said in a statement on Monday. “We all came together to make the remote day as engaging and as smooth as possible. The one problem seemed to be Google. They had the same notice as our students, parents and teachers, so they need to do better.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
