Wake County Public School System superintendent Robert Taylor will come up with a plan to conduct remote learning during emergencies before schools have to use all teacher workdays or schedule makeup days, the Wake County school board's policy committee decided Tuesday.

Any plan Taylor comes up with would be reviewed by the board and wouldn't go into effect until the next school year. So if another emergency, such as inclement weather, cancels school this year, the district will have to schedule another makeup day.

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"It is about, how do we have a robust plan?" Taylor told the board's policy committee Tuesday. He said some districts that have used remote learning this year have already made changes to how they do it, based on hiccups they encountered earlier this year.

The school board's current policy requires that all banked days -- extra schooldays scheduled into the calendar every year -- and teacher workdays be used before pivoting to remote learning. Three snow days last week prompted traditional calendar schools to reschedule school on the three remaining teacher workdays this year: March 14, April 7 and May 2.

But the district has also been unprepared to pivot to remote learning, prompting Saturday makeup days March 1 and April 5 in many year-round schools, even when banked days and teacher workdays had been exhausted.

The district has said it hasn't had the structural supports required for remote learning, though it has submitted the state-required plan to conduct remote learning this year.

That plan isn't detailed, school leaders said, and the district wants to ensure students have effective instruction and aren't just marking another day off of the calendar for convenience's sake. It doesn't call for live learning via webinar, and the superintendent's recommended plan may not, either. A lack of stable Internet connection for some students or and lack of technological know-how or attention span for younger students means online assignments or paper packets might be more useful for students, leaders said.

"I'm worried about the mechanics of it," Board Member Lindsay Mahaffey said, noting that high schoolers are likelier to have an easier time with remote learning. "I don't think remote is the be-all, end-all."

Taylor, at the suggestion of school board members, will also consider the needs of students with disabilities when doing remote learning. Many of those students struggled to get accommodations during Covid-19 pandemic remote learning in 2020 and 2021.

"Parents have come to me and said their kids cannot do remote, they just cannot," Board Member Wing Ng said.

Wake school board members have received feedback from families both for and against using remote learning as a substitute for snow days.

When adopting its current policy in 2022, the board decided not to do remote learning unless as a last resort because of negative feedback the district had received to using remote learning during the Covid-19 pandemic and coming out of the pandemic.

Academic progress backslid after months of remote learning across Wake County and the nation. Wake's math scores have since bounced back but many students are still behind in reading, compared to student test scores before the pandemic.

Several nearby school systems used remote learning instead of a snow day last week in attempts to be less disruptive to their school calendars.

State law limits school districts to using just five days of remote learning. Schools otherwise build in flexibility for inclement whether by scheduling more schooldays than needed each year. How many extra "banked" days are built into each school's calendar depends on the calendar type, such as multi-track year-round or traditional.

Some schools lost banked school hours when they dismissed early this fall and winter for a lack of functioning heat or air conditioning on especially hot or cold days.

Wake's traditional calendar schools lost a banked day Jan. 3 after the board voted 7-2 in December to cancel school that day to extend winter break. Jan. 3, a Friday, had been the only scheduled day of school that week.