Park Ridge holds its first Virtual Day

On Feb. 10, less than a week after Pascack Valley’s two virtual days, the Park Ridge School district held its own virtual day for its students. It was the district’s first attempt at doing so.

“We were being open minded,” said Dr. Robert Gamper, Superintendent of Schools in the Park Ridge School District. “For the most part, the staff that I spoke with seemed to be happy with the way that the day proceeded.”

Student feedback on social media was positive as well, according to Gamper. The main problem technology-wise was similar to a problem that PV had during its first virtual day, where a massive influx of people was overwhelming to the system. The problem was fixed after about 20 minutes, according to Gamper.

There were several differences between the PV virtual days and the one held in Park Ridge. 

The most notable difference was, perhaps, the fact that both the middle school and high school were a part of Park Ridge’s virtual day. Because Park Ridge is a K-12 district, grades 7-12 had a “virtual day option”.

Students who chose to come into school followed their normal class schedule, doing the “virtual day” work that was assigned to them. Students who stayed home followed the schedule of the day, including lunch. About 40 students chose to come into school and about 520 students chose to stay at home.

Park Ridge’s learning management system is Schoology. Teachers posted videos of themselves, other publicly available videos, or websites as learning platforms. Though the administration had decided that assignments were to be made available before class periods, some classes were made available from the beginning of the day, according to Kirsten Ryan, a sophomore at Park Ridge High School.

“I was able to do a few classes that were available before first period was over and then had to wait until around 1 to do the rest,” said Ryan.

“We wanted students to be following along with a regular school day and not get all the assignments completed before the day.”  said Gamper.

“I personally loved virtual school day,” said Ryan. “The only improvement I would make would be to make all classes available from the start of the day so that we could skip around.”