The last two weeks Fayette County Public Schools called off school for NTI days. Students had an extended winter break, and didn’t go back until Thursday. This was due to the winter storm that passed through Kentucky and the roads not being clear enough for buses to drive.
During Non-Traditional Instructional days, or NTI days, students do work online instead of going to school, for the safety of students, teachers, and staff. NTI days have taken place of snow days, but if the weather is bad enough, snow days will still be called.
NTI days are good sometimes because if all students do their work, it counts as a school day so kids don’t have to make it up at the end of the year. FCPS is only allowed to call for 10 NTI days, making it important to make a very careful decision about the days they are calling for NTI.
NTI days have the benefits of counting as school days at the end of the year, however there needs to be enough students to do the work to count for enough attendance of the day. If not all students don’t do NTI, they can’t count as school days.
Also, students aren’t learning anything new from NTI days. They are repeating previous work, and some aren’t even doing the work if they are learning something new. If students aren’t learning something new, and they aren’t making up these school days because they are NTI, students will get behind on what they need to learn.
NTI is also hard for students and teachers in AP and advanced classes. With the limited schedule of the AP test, it makes it hard for AP students and teachers to make up the time missed before the AP test. Also in advanced classes, there is a certain amount of curriculum that needs to be finished before school ends, and typically students won’t learn something new while doing NTI.
NTI has multiple benefits, but overall there is a lot that can be improved upon. NTI is beneficial because we don’t have to go as far into summer as we would with snow days, but there should be changes made to make them more efficient.
