Education minister to examine how snow days and at-home learning could mesh

With students and teachers growing more familiar and comfortable with online learning, Nova Scotia's education minister wants to take a look at how that might be applied to snow days.

"This is something that's newly available as a result of technology and the efforts of lots of people over the course of the pandemic," Becky Druhan told reporters in Halifax following a cabinet meeting.

Thursday marked the first snow day of the school year for most students, with classes cancelled across the province.

But before Druhan is willing to make any pronouncements on whether snow days could go the way of the chalk board, she said she wants to first understand what, if anything, the collective agreement might say about the issue and she wants to talk with representatives from the Nova Scotia Teachers Union.

Teachers union president Paul Wozney was not available for an interview on Thursday, but when he was asked about the issue a year ago, he said the employer has the ability to decide what happens on snow days.

Wozney said at the time the issue hadn't been discussed with the union.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which has seen schools close intermittently — sometimes for months at a time — resulted in the former Liberal government supercharging efforts to make at-home learning a possibility through the mass purchase of devices for students to use at home and other resources.

Druhan said that makes it worth having the conversation, even if ultimately there aren't any changes.

"As we've seen, you know, we have abilities now that we didn't have in years past and it's absolutely worth exploring what ways we should be modernizing the system and modernizing our approach."