The Ouachita Parish School Board made a bad precedent worse, and alerts the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and/or the Louisiana Legislature they might want to counter this.

This past week the Board ratified its academic year 2026 calendar. Included in it are three virtual learning days, up from two at present. Virtual learning days are those where students don’t report to class but are responsible for completing school work due that day from another location.

The concept originated around a decade ago when, with the increased technological capacity to deliver coursework remotely and the spread of devices among students to perform it led some districts that experience chronic bad weather to use these days to supplement “snow days.” While calendars could work in a few days where schools would close because of inclement weather, in too many cases that allocation would be exhausted and then some, causing loss of learning potential. With this option, snow days could be converted into virtual learning days with less erosion of learning. Adoption spread when the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic closed schools for an extended period of time.

But Ouachita rarely has weather problems. Instead, its philosophy primarily is to have these days as a convenience for school employees although they can be invoked for bad weather scenarios. Some work on classrooms can be done while teachers can utilize the time for parent conferences, as well as dispensing with in-person instruction for the day, although there is no requirement for teachers to appear on campus.

Typically, a student is assigned a standards-based assessment to complete prior to the end of the school day. If it is a computer-based assignment and a student doesn’t have access to a device during that interval, paper-based work can be turned in at the earliest opportunity. Work not completed by the deadline is considered an absence.

More than emergency use of these, as Ouachita intends, has stoked controversy. Without dispute, remote learning except in postsecondary settings generally tends to be less effective than the in-person kind, with the impact increasing the younger the pupil is. Of course, since only a fraction of the school year would involve this delivery, the impact would be small, but perhaps not worth it compared to other alternatives.

Of greater concern, these days create significant burdens for some parents, especially those single ones with smaller children. Many families rely upon schools to serve as guardians over their children while they work outside of the home, as the youngsters need an adult present. In order to have that, parents may have to take time off their jobs and in extreme circumstances as a result could lose them.

Also argued is that students suffer because remote learning provides far fewer chances for social interaction, and for some the disruption of routine impedes their learning. As well, having an occasional unplanned day off – as long as it is made up another time – often has a positive impact on a child’s morale.

Finally, children from low-income households rely on school meals programs. That becomes an extra burden and expense to those parent(s) if they must handle it.

The best solutions are traditional ones. Build in more potential instruction days so that weather doesn’t put schools into a bind where remote delivery becomes the only option, which also allows for better planning by parents in knowing that some or all of the last few days of the year as makeup days may be waived if enough bad weather doesn’t interfere. And if despite that luck is bad in that regard, schedule makeup class periods on Saturdays.

Serving the needs of families/taxpayers must come before convenience for employees. The OPSB made a mistake in having planned virtual learning days at all, much less increasing their number. Eliminating this option statewide is something that the Legislature and/or BESE should pursue.