Coronavirus and Schools: COVID-19 Related Closings
CORONAVIRUS UPDATE
Many school districts are contemplating following the lead of West Chester University and closing their schools in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Like WCU, these school districts are planning some form or another of on-line learning during days of closure.
Please remember that last summer, the Pennsylvania General Assembly enacted Act 64, adding Section 1506 to the Pennsylvania School Code. That provision allowed schools to develop plans for the use of “flexible instructional days” to address school closings cause by such events as “a disease epidemic” or a “hazardous weather condition.” School districts seeking to use on-line and other remote learning options to cover such school closings had to submit a plan to PDE, including provisions for addressing the needs of students with disabilities, by September 1, 2019 for the first two years of FID implementation, and by June 1 for each year thereafter. PDE was to have approved those two-year initial plans by November 1, 2019. So far, the General Assembly has not modified the law to allow schools more flexibility in the use of FIDs in light of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Thus, if your district did not submit a plan and obtain PDE approval for the use of FIDs during school closings, it will not be able to do so now. We will have to wait and see whether amendatory legislation is forthcoming.
For those of you who have received approval to use FIDs, recall that the rights of students with disabilities under the IDEA and Section 504 to individualized instruction, adaptations, and program modifications remain in full force and effect and must be addressed in the implementation of whatever remote learning your FID plan allows. Again, mandate relief might come from the United States Congress, but as with the possible expansion of FIDs by the Pennsylvania General Assembly, no new legislation in response to the COVID-19 outbreak has yet to appear.