An unseasonal onslaught of winter weather and district policy has Academy D-20 already short on snow days for this school year. With the winter snow yet to arrive in full force, one of its students is hoping to change that.
Emily Beckman, a sixth grader at Discovery Canyon Campus, recently started an online petition calling for Academy School District 20 to reinstate traditional snow days instead of the remote learning days currently in place.
One reason for the call to action is partly due to her fondness for the childhood pastimes associated with snow days.
"She loves playing in the snow, she loves sledding, and she loves helping shovel the neighbors' driveways," her father Jeremy Beckman said. "She also just loves the anticipation of the snow day."
And while Emily admits that she made the most of her recent time off with snowball fights, playtime with her pets and The Last Survivors book series, she's also leading this charge with her educators in mind.
"It's not only beneficial to students, but it's also beneficial for the teachers to get caught up on their work," she said. "Because sometimes they have to get caught up on everything during the weekends or during their time outside of school."
Under D-20's current policy, any school closures for the remainder of the 2024-25 year would result in remote learning days.
The policy she's hoping to change was revised in Aug. 2020 to shift to remote learning on school days where hazardous weather leads to closing the schools. The first two days of school closures due to weather are considered "traditional snow days" and students and staff are not required to attend or work remotely.
All subsequent closures are known as "synchronous eLearning snow days" that start two hours later to allow students and staff to prepare and remotely follow a schedule established by each school. This applies only for D-20's middle schools and high schools and only elementary school staff would have to work under these circumstances.
Families are notified through several different media the night before the school day. The district does not penalize students if students stay home on inclement weather days, but their parents or guardians need to report their absences to their schools.
Since multiple local school districts including D-20 closed their schools earlier this month for three consecutive days because of a winter storm, this would mark the first time that Beckman would have to pivot to remote learning, should another snowstorm close her school. D-20 allowed for a third snow day this year since staff and students were unable to prepare for a multi-day weather event.
Emily is hardly alone in her stance. As of Nov. 20, her petition has garnered more than 2,000 signatures after starting it three days ago, with many signees echoing her concerns.
Beckman's petition specifically asks that the district's six calendar days without student contact be designated as traditional snow days for all grades before turning to online learning days and that D-20 closes its schools located on the Air Force Academy whenever the base closes due to inclement weather.
Emily says this is being asked because a base closure last year was complicated by its schools on base remaining open. One of her friends at Douglass Valley told her that this made entering and exiting Academy grounds difficult for parents as well as gate workers.
"If regular people can't get on and off base, how are students supposed to," she asked.
Snow days vs. remote days
In the years coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, most public school districts reverted back to their respective procedures, which included snow days for hazardous weather closures.
Conversely, D-20 leadership opted to revise their closure policy to allow for remote instruction. Reasons for the revisions include ensuring that the district meets the set number of instructional days for the school year without scheduling make-up days along with travel safety considerations.
Neighboring school district Colorado Springs D-11 enacted a similar policy in 2021, though, to date, district leadership has opted for traditional snow days rather than remote learning when schools were forced to close.
In Widefield School District 3, the district has set aside seven full school days before converting to completely online learning. D-49 has also explored with e-learning days for some of its schools dating back to 2018, though there are no policies currently in place that require or detail such a response.
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In Colorado's larger districts, Denver Public Schools has reverted to its traditional snow day approach coming out of the pandemic while Jeffco Public Schools transitions to remote learning days when its schools are closed for multiple days in a row.
The argument for snow days over remote learning days is that this type of instruction isn't a suitable replacement for in-class school and the days off provide a much-needed break for stressed-out students and teachers.
The petition cites a 2012 study from the American Academy of Pediatrics which states unstructured playtime in the natural environment strengthens children's self-confidence and nurtures their well-being.
Jeremy, who supports his daughter's petition, taught in D-20 from 2012 until 2024 and said that remote learning is a "tool that can help" educators but that it's "no substitute for in-person instruction."
He added that, despite the two-hour delay to the school day, having to adjust lesson planning to a remote setting so quickly can be "really stressful" for teachers and that others often aren't prepared to do so.
"If you're a science teacher and you have a lab day planned, for instance, you can't really shift that to a remote learning day," he said.
Emily said that spotty Wi-Fi connections and small screens made remote learning difficult for her during the pandemic while her teachers told her they struggled to interact with every student due to similar issues.
As far as overall student achievement is concerned, D-20 has remained near the top of all performing school districts in Colorado before, during and after the pandemic. It is one of only four districts to be accredited with distinction since the state introduced the accreditation model in 2008.
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A study by the Education Recovery Scorecard reported that learning losses from 2019-2022 nationwide were due to a number of factors and can't be solely attributed to remote learning or instruction during that period. Other factors mentioned include COVID-19 death rates, families' socioeconomic status and other disparities in impacting student performance.
As for students in favor of the remote approach, Emily said that some of her more introverted classmates liked how there's less pressure to speak up in front of everyone and how they're able to meet directly with their teacher after class.
'It's not just one person's opinion'
Emily said she has been surprised by the support she's received to date. Her initial goal was to gather 500 signatures, which then grew to 1,500 and then to 2,000.
"I didn't expect it to get that high that soon," she said.
Along with just the petition, she has expanded her efforts to talk to teachers in her school, promoting the petition on social media and hanging flyers in various classrooms.
She said the support she's received from fellow students and staff has inspired her to bring her concerns up with D-20's board of education.
"That support has just shown that this is something that a lot of people want and it's not just one person's opinion," Jeremy said.
Regardless of the outcome of her efforts, she said the experience overall has inspired her to take a stand for change going forward. She specifically cited her former principal at School in the Woods Jonathan Wuerth as one of the people who gave her the confidence to have her voice be heard.
"He's the one who taught me to speak up if I thought something wasn't right and he really inspired me to try and make a difference in the world," she said.
Those interested in virtually signing the petition can do so at www.change.org/ElPasoSnow.
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