With winter weather expected in the area on Monday, many school districts are closing or moving to remote learning.
Public schools in Wake, Durham, Chatham and Orange counties are among those closed on Monday. WRAL News is tracking the schools, businesses and companies that close ahead of the winter weather. You can keep track of them online.
Whenever there is a chance of inclement weather, school districts face a crucial decision. It’s a decision that parents and students argue comes with pros and cons.
“I think they do the best that they can with what they’re given,” said March Burch, a mother of a ninth-grade Durham Public Schools student.
Burch said her son, Gabriel, has experienced both remote learning and school closures.
“My son basically wrapped up a full day’s worth of school remote learning-wise on Friday in a 45-minute period,” she added. “So, is that really a school day?”
Gabriel is a ninth-grader at the Durham School of Technology and said on his remote learning days, his teachers assign classwork on the learning management system Canvas or other websites.
“I don’t think it’s really supposed to be about learning stuff because you can’t really talk to the teachers,” Gabriel said. “I think it’s supposed to be like, more like studying and just going over what you already know.”
Other parents and students share the same sentiments. In Granville County Public Schools, Superintendent Stan Winborne told WRAL News that he has heard mixed feedback from families about remote learning.
“All of our students in grades three through 12 have a device, but they don’t always take them home every day, and it’s difficult to know the reliability and speed they have at home to connect to the internet, so we have to make sure we provide an alternate learning packet for them,” Winborne said.
Those paper packets weren’t ready in time, so Granville County Schools is closed on Monday.
Wake students stranded at school during 2005 snow
The decision to close school before a potential weather event – especially winter weather – often brings up memories of the 2005 snow that resulted in 3,000 Wake County students stranded at school.
The weather system was expected to yield only flurries on in January of that year, but it brought just enough snow to snarl traffic, strand 3,000 Wake students overnight at more than 50 schools and produce nightmarish commutes lasting eight or more hours.
