For Weather, Beacon City School District Goes Remote Wednesday On A Tuesday - A Glimpse Into How That Works

The Beacon City School District was “the largest district in Dutchess County to open for in-person instruction for our students with our Hybrid model,” according to Beacon’s Superintendent Landahl to District families on Tuesday afternoon (2/9/2021), after a Snow Day Switcheroonie to avoid an actual Snow Day with no class meets at all.

Dr. Landahl continued: “We have safely maintained our Hybrid and Remote models through many challenges the past many months without a long term closure of any of our schools.”

Part of why this has been possible has been the District’s nimble and flexible Remote Learning Model that has been a work in progress since the first weeks that schools closed in 2020 for COVID-19. Normally correspondence like this is kept to District parents, who sludge through the day with their kids, nose to the grindstone.

This type of Snow Day Change is being shared it here in order to bring awareness to other districts who are researching how to swing in and out of in-person instruction as needed, as well as to employers so that they can see what life is like for their working parent employees who need to accommodate their children at the drop of a snowflake.

As background, since COVID-19, students are divided into two groups who go to school on different days: Blue Group and Gold Group. On Wednesdays, everyone stays home and does more Google Meets with their teachers (usually…this may depend on the teacher). On an actual Snow-Day-Not-A-Snow-Day, kids may also do “Specials” at home, like Gym, Music, Art, etc. This means that the house may sound like a stampede during remote “Gym” class, and crayons will suddenly be needed during “Art” class. Yay. All for this action versus no plan and staring at the wall or YouTube on a TV on the wall.

This time ‘round, we had a Snow-Day-Wednesday on a Tuesday. Plus, in order to help the Blue Group kids be in school as much as possible, who it sounds like have had Snow Days be on their schedule the most, they were granted permission to come in on a Wednesday.

It sounds head-spinning, and it is. But the Beacon community has been all-in to do our best to stay safe and healthy, and to use opportunities to learn in-person for those who are comfortable doing so.

The email from Dr. Landahl announcing the Tuesday schedule is as follows:

Due to expected winter weather tomorrow, the Beacon City School District will be shifting its schedule this week. Tomorrow, Tuesday, February 9th, the district will operate on a Remote Wednesday schedule with buildings closed and district and school offices operating remotely as well. There will be no out of district transportation tomorrow.

Wednesday, February 10th, the district will operate on a Blue Hybrid In-Person Schedule. Meal delivery and the COVID-19 Surveillance testing will still take place on Wednesday as well.

We would not normally make a weather call this early but we wanted to let people know about this schedule change as early as possible and we were concerned about our Blue Hybrid students missing so much in-person time lately.