Oregon schools will not replace the weeks of traditional classroom instruction students are missing with online classes or another substitute while schools are shuttered until April 28.

The reasons why boil down to two words: Access and equity.

“Protecting student rights has to be front and center during the conversation about distance learning,” Marc Siegel, spokesman for the Oregon Department of Education, told The Oregonian/OregonLive in an email. “You cannot open a brick-and-mortar school in Oregon unless it is accessible to every student in their school district. The same rules apply to an online school.”

The state’s public schools are not equipped to do that for special education students, those who speak English as a second language, students who lack computers or internet access and others with special circumstances during the shutdown, he noted.

“Our students with disabilities and specialized needs, by law, require specially designed instruction,” Siegel said. “If a school opens to serve its community’s students, it must be able to provide those specialized instruction services.”

Early in the state’s coronavirus outbreak, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown ordered all the state’s public schools to cancel seven school days bracketing spring break. Five days later, she extended the closure by four weeks, citing a need to slow the spread of the virus and minimize deaths.

Schools can, and in most cases will, offer suggestions for optional learning activities that students and families can engage in during the nearly six-week stretch until classes are scheduled to resume.

Districts across the state have adopted their own approaches.

Officials in the Salem-Keizer district will have an online portal for students and parents to download supplemental lessons that won’t be graded, according to The Salem Reporter. In Tigard, Tualatin and Portland, district officials are distributing homework packets at meal sites.

Portland Public Schools, the state’s largest district, also has a patchwork of online lessons meant to keep kids engaged while school is out. Beaverton district officials are updating their recommendations for learning in each grade on a daily basis.

Portland Superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero stressed the online lessons his district suggests won’t be graded, nor will they replace classroom instruction. That appears to be the case statewide.

“We need to do some additional thinking on how we might support engagement between students and teachers,” Guerrero said. “But distance learning is never going to be a substitute for the in-person relationship that really makes for a school community.”

Many Oregon students lack a computer or tablet at home.

To help Portland families, Guerrero said the district will make available some of the 45,000 devices at its disposal. And on Tuesday, Portland school officials set up a form that allows families to request a computer to access its online resources.

When St. Mary’s Academy announced its own closure in an effort to stem the spread of coronavirus, the private high school noted that each of its students is assigned an iPad at the start of their freshman year.

None of the lessons that school districts are posting on websites or emailing to families are expected to advance students through the normal learning tracks their teachers would have led them through if school were in session. Neither the state nor individual school districts have the infrastructure to ensure students are progressing as normal.

“What happens in our classrooms every day cannot be stood-up in a few days and be expected to replicate the learning and care that is delivered in our schools,” Siegel said.

Guerrero noted that not all of his teachers, particularly educators who historically haven’t used technology in the classroom, are trained in running online courses.

“We’re about 10 years behind everyone else,” he said.

Guerrero also said he’s more worried about feeding kids and keeping them engaged than preparing them for state and national standardized tests.

“How can you expect a student to perform on a test if they return to the classroom a day or a week before it’s administered?” he said.

State education chief Colt Gill told The Oregonian/OregonLive his department is looking “under every rock to seek federal waivers and flexibility.”

In the meantime, the agency has assured districts that Brown’s order will not affect their funding so long as they continue providing meals to students, provide supplemental learning materials and pay their employees.

Gill also said his agency will work with the state school board and the governor’s office to adjust rules and seek statutory changes, although he did not specify what those will be.

“We will not and cannot waive any individual student’s rights,” Gill said. “Every student in Oregon deserves equal and equitable access to their education.”

Meanwhile, the head of the nation’s largest teachers union is calling on Congress to take action to help students without computers and wifi access continue learning and to relax special education rules so schools can offer lessons even if they can’t fully meet the special learning needs of students with disabilities.

Such legislation “must address the major inequities that exist in the ‘homework gap,’ which could cause millions of students who don’t have wi-fi or devices at home to fall behind,” Lily Askelsen Garcia, president of the National Education Association, said in a statement. “In this time of global crisis, the U.S. Department of Education must adjust its regulations ... and provide reasonable flexibility under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.”