Bishop Kelley High School Turns Snow Days Into 'Cyber Days'

School districts all over our area closed Wednesday because of the weather, and several school districts are considering what to do Thursday.

At Bishop Kelley High School, there's no such thing as a snow day anymore, they have cyber-days. When the weather gets bad, the district turns to Google.

Molly Fischer, Alex Abney and Neddie Mandeville watched and listened to a lecture in AP Government class at Bishop Kelly - they were in school, just not at school.

Father Brian O'Brien, President of Bishop Kelley, said it's Kelley's first year on Google Classroom. Wednesday was the second cyber day and everything was working wonderfully.

"We are not taking back other days off, we are not adding to the end of the year. In fact, this year we did not even build in snow days," he said.

When the school declares a cyber-day, teachers put classwork on Google Classroom. Students must log on by 3 p.m. to be counted as present for that day and they do the assignments and turn them in the next day.

"We have finals next week and this isn't going to keep us behind or anything. We'll still be on track," Mandeville said.

Teachers stay connected so if there are questions about assignments or other material students can get the answers.

O'Brien said Google Classroom has some drawbacks.

"The downside is if you have a lot of students who don't have Internet access," he said.

If there were power outages that would also be an issue, and it couldn't replace the school experience, but on a snow it can be a nice replacement.

"It works for a snow day, or any other day we have to miss. It's really awesome," Abney said.

Bishop Kelley isn't the only Google Classroom school in Tulsa. Riverfield Country Day School has been part of the program for several years.