The new leader of the Oklahoma Senate says he plans to renew the effort to restrict virtual and distance-learning days in Oklahoma public schools, saying routine use of virtual days outside of actual emergency situations has been “disastrous” for children’s learning.

Despite the negative impact on learning, Senate President Pro Tempore-Elect Lonnie Paxton, R-Tuttle, noted that school districts across the state have unveiled proposed calendars for the 2025-2026 school year that include pre-scheduled virtual days.

“Children learn best when they are in the classroom,” Paxton said. “They also learn critical social skills and how to interact with their peers. Virtual learning also puts a strain on working parents, who must find childcare or take off from work.”

Paxton and state Sen. Kristen Thompson, R-Edmond, plan to refile legislation to reduce the use of virtual school days in public education.

Senate Bill 1768, as filed in the 2024 session, allowed virtual classroom instruction only in the event of inclement weather, staff shortages, illness, building maintenance issues, or if deemed necessary by school administrators and approved by the State Department of Education.

“This is necessary legislation to ensure students are getting the best education possible, which is in-person and in the classroom,” Thompson said. “I have seen firsthand the lack of quality instruction that occurs on a remote learning day. We have a responsibility to our children that they get the best education possible. I look forward to filing this measure again.”

Out of more than 500 public school districts in Oklahoma, more than 100 districts reported having at least one site where students had two work weeks (10 days) or more virtual days throughout the 2022-2023 school year with sites at more than 60 districts imposing distance learning for three or more work weeks. 

The Oklahoma Rural Schools Coalition argued the number of virtual days reported by districts to the Oklahoma State Department of Education for the 2022-2023 school year was not accurate. But many of those districts listed numerous pre-planned virtual days on their public school-year calendars.

In addition, many districts that have four-day school weeks have also combined a shortened week with pre-scheduled virtual days.

Nationally, the average K–12 school is in session for 179 days a year without about seven hours spent in school each day. But in Oklahoma, schools can provide just 165 days of instruction, so long as 1,080 hours of total learning occur over the course of the year.

And state law allows some districts to be exempted from even the 165-day requirement.

In 2024, the Jennings district was allowed to provide just 156 days of instruction while the Glencoe district provided 158 days. And those totals included numerous distance-learning days, according to the schools’ public calendars. Jennings had eight “distance learning days” built into the school calendar while Glencoe had five pre-scheduled “virtual days.”

More districts are now considering a shift to four-day weeks, such as Broken Arrow, one of the state’s largest districts. The Broken Arrow plan includes pre-scheduled distance-learning days.

When distance learning became the norm in many schools nationwide during the Covid pandemic, it was associated with substantial learning loss.

A May 2022 report from the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University found that “remote instruction was a primary driver of widening achievement gaps” during the pandemic, while a 2021 working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research found “that pass rates declined compared to prior years and that these declines were larger in districts with less in-person instruction.”

Paxton noted that Oklahoma schools have been provided with record funding in recent years that negates any need to do distance learning as a cost-cutting measure. State appropriations to public schools have increased by more than $1 billion since 2018, and other funding sources have also increased.

“In the past several years, we have appropriated historic levels of funding to schools across the state,” Paxton said. “I believe returning to in-person work and cutting down on virtual days will improve productivity across state agencies, including public education.”