Snow blankets Carlton Street near SE 62nd Street in Portland, Ore., on Feb. 13, 2025. Southeast of the city, the Estacada School District is holding virtual classes amid the winter storm.
Sarah Nairalez / OPB
Most districts in Northwest Oregon and Southwest Washington closed Thursday due to ongoing snowstorms across the region. But there’s one noticeable exception.
Estacada School District — about 30 miles southeast of Portland — is holding classes virtually. They’re doing so thanks to a virtual program the small district set up before the days of remote learning.
“The origin story to our virtual days is a bit funny,” Maggie Kelly, director of communications for the district, told OPB Thursday morning.
Estacada officials were already working on a virtual learning system for the winter of the 2019-20 school year when the pandemic hit.
“[We] were able to pivot the plan and became the first school district in Oregon to connect virtually with our students,” Kelly said.
Kelly said the district can now implement virtual learning instead of school closures when needed, as long as there isn’t a power outage in the community. District officials try to anticipate bad weather so staff can send all students home with their devices, chargers and hotspots, as needed, the night before a storm is predicted to start, which they did this week.
Related: Winter storm warnings underway in western Oregon; weather advisories east of the Cascades
Specialists, translators and interpreters work virtually as well, Kelly said, which allows them to help students who need additional support, including students with disabilities and English language learners. Virtual learning in the event of an emergency campus closure, like inclement weather, is included in the district’s union contracts. A message popped up on the district’s website Thursday with information on school expectations for the day and where to get tech support.
“It’s not perfect, and we’re always tweaking the plan,” Kelly said, “but we get good feedback as well as attendance numbers that rival in-person learning.”
During cold and flu season, she added, even students stuck at home with the sniffles can catch up with “asynchronous communication” this way — a phrase many families will remember from remote learning.
True — switching to virtual learning means Estacada’s staff and students don’t get the day to frolic in the snow. But this approach has major educational benefits, the biggest of which is that learning doesn’t stop. Kelly said the district noticed that “makeup days” tacked on to the end of the school year are usually pretty poorly attended and not best practice.
“They also weren’t helpful in closing the gap for our graduating seniors,” she said.
The Estacada district enrolls just over 3,100 students. However, Kelly said district size shouldn’t stop others from trying the solution for themselves.
“We hear a lot that this is only doable because we’re a small school system,” she said, “but we do think that this is scalable, and something that works.”
Read about other closures and available resources to weather the storm at OPB.org/cold.
