WESTSIDE — With so many school days missed because of inclement weather, area school boards have been struggling with howto make up those days.
With as many as a dozen days off so far, various plans have been approved to get students into classrooms for the number of instructional days required by the Arkansas legislature.
Gravette
There will be no Saturday classes for students in the Gravette School District unless more days are missed due toinclement weather.
Gravette School Directors, on Monday night, opted to shorten the annual spring break by three days, retaining the final two days, March 28 and 29, of the scheduled break. School will be held March 23, 24 and 25.
Classes will be held April 5, originally planned for parent-teacher conferences. Those conferences will be held April 4-5, during the late afternoon.
The final day of school is now scheduled as June 2. Any additional days missed between now and then will be added to that date.
Superintendent Dr. Angela Kelly presented the board with three options, all of which had been presented to the 237-member faculty and staff. The option chosen by the greatest number of the 212 responses was the one approved by the board. One option included Saturday classes; the other added all days to the scheduled end-of-school date.
Decatur
The last day of school in Decatur has been extended to make up for snow days, but students will still be out of class by Memorial Day.
At Monday’s meeting, school board members voted to make changes to the school’s calendar that will move the last day of school from May 13 to May 27 and use one day of Spring Break for instructional time.
Superintendent Larry Ben reported that the Decatur School District has missed 11 days of classes so far this year due to inclement weather. Despite the large amount of time the district has missed, the original calendar left plenty of time for make-up days without having to extend classes past Memorial Day, he said.
“We are in good shape,” Ben said.
Last year former superintendent LeRoy Ortman recommended a calendar that would allow students to get out of school much earlier in the spring. The calendar shortened traditional school holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas and Spring Break to allow for a longer summer vacation.
On Monday, Ben recommended that school board members change the calendar to use one day - March 28 - of the district’s three-day spring break, so students wouldn’t have to come back to school on May 30, and so that there would be one extra day of instructional time before the Benchmark tests. Spring break would amount to a long weekend, from March 24 through 27.If there are any more snow days, Spring break will be eliminated altogether, Ben said.
Ben told the school board that teachers and staff have voted overwhelmingly in favor ofthe calendar revisions. School board members are required to vote on any calendar changes, because the school’s calendar is part of the teacher’s policy manual, he explained.
Gentry
After an in-house survey and discussion at Monday night’s school board meeting, Gentry School Board decided to leave the calendar as is rather than following the procedure to change it.
The district has missed 12 snow days. With those days added to the end of the calendar the last day of classes will be June 3. According to Gentry School District superintendent Randy Barrett, should additional days be missed, the school board may revisit the matter.
Barrett said teachers already have plans in place to adjust teaching schedules to cover necessary units before Benchmark exams this spring.
News, Pages 1 on 02/23/2011