CASD board talks snow days, virtual days and more
The Chambersburg Area school board, which reorganized with new and re-elected members last month, met for the fourth time at the regular meeting on Tuesday.
The current board consists of President Edward Norcross (Region 6; he was absent Tuesday), Vice President Faye Gaugler (Region 1), Sherian Diller (Region 3), Stephanie Gouss (Region 8), Stephanie Harbaugh (Region 5), Mike Hayduk (Region 7), Carl McKee (Region 2), Ben Raber (Region 9) and Lance Walker (Region 4). Gouss, Harbaugh and Hayduk are the new members.
Snow days, virtual learning and the teachers' contract were among the main discussions. Here is a breakdown of what the board talked about.
Will students need to make up snow days in CASD?
School was canceled twice last week, on Jan. 16 and 19, due to winter weather. Superintendent Chris Bigger said during his report that he received messages questioning how these and other potential snow days may affect the school calendar, particularly graduation dates.
Up to two more snow days likely will not require make-up days, but students may need to attend make-up days at the end of the school year if there are three or more additional snow days this school year, Bigger said.
The reason comes down to a new Pennsylvania law, which aims to give school districts greater flexibility by requiring them to provide a certain number of instructional hours instead of a minimum number of days. Districts must provide 900 instructional hours in elementary schools and 990 hours in secondary schools, instead of 180 hours across the board.
"Chambersburg exceeds the number of hours, allowing us the opportunity to might not have to make up the days," Bigger said.
Known as HB 1506, the legislation was just signed in December. Because the district has not yet received "regulatory guidance on what the new law means," Bigger said he does not want to commit to there being no make-up days.
The superintendent advised students and parents to "stay tuned" on make-up days, which would extend the school year to the first week of June, but said there is no indication right now that the district will need to change graduation dates for Chambersburg Area Senior High School or the Career Magnet School.
CASD has already used three built-in make-up days due to schools being closed during the first week of the year in August because of a cybersecurity breach. The first make-up day was Oct. 9, and students will attend school Feb. 19 and March. 15.
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Will CASD snow days be virtual learning days?
District families should not expect any future snow days this school year to be Flexible Instruction Days, where students would need to take part in virtual learning.
A carryover from pandemic closures, CASD and other districts began turning snow days into FIDs so the day would still count as an instructional day.
Bigger, however, is not a fan of using FIDs for snow days, as he explained after board member Stephanie Harbaugh said she received calls and messages from people wondering why FIDs were not called for the recent snow days.
“It was my decision not to run FID days at this point in time," said Bigger, who officially took over as superintendent after Thanksgiving break. He added he prefers to assess the quality of virtual days and ensure students get a "good education" on those days before going forward with flexible instruction days.
"If there's anything we learned from the pandemic, academic performance dropped considerably post-COVID," Bigger added. "So I'm hesitant to run to a FID day, which is a cyber day or some version of that when we know systemically it wasn't quality in the end."
The discussion on flexible instruction days came during an agenda item on the district-wide 2024-25 calendar. According to the agenda, "minor" changes from this year include four professional development days in which students will have off but staff will work: Sept. 11, Feb. 12, March 19 and Jan. 3 (all Wednesdays). Jan. 3 will be a "flex day" for staff where they won't have to participate if they meet certain requirements.
The agenda item passed 8-0.
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District, teachers agree to extend contract
As part of the consent agenda, the school board approved a one-year extension to teachers' employment contract.
The three-year contract was set to expire at the end of June, and the district and Chambersburg Area Education Association were to be begin negotiations on a new contract by Jan. 11.
The memorandum of agreement connected the need for an extension to giving the district's new superintendent time to become better acclimated ahead of negotiations.
"It buys us time to really sit down and really work through issues in the future if we have any," Bigger said. "That does help me tremendously as a new superintendent coming in not to jump into maybe having negotiations in a short period of time."
The district and union agreed on raises and other provisions.
When will the CASD school board meet next?
The school board will next meet on Feb. 13 in the CASD Administration Building's board room. At 6 p.m. will be the second public forum (topic: academics), followed by the committee of the whole meeting (non-action board meeting) at 7 p.m.
The committee of the whole meeting will also be streamed on Youtube.
Unlike last year when they were held on the same day, the committee of the whole meetings will be held the second Tuesday of the month and regular board meetings will take place the fourth Tuesday of each month.
Amber South can be reached at asouth@publicopinionnews.com.
This article originally appeared on Chambersburg Public Opinion: Chambersburg school board: Snow days vs. virtual days
