FAYETTEVILLE — Students in the Fayetteville School District nearly escaped Saturday classes, but calendars released Friday show the region’s heavy snow and ice this month will force a Saturday makeup session March 5 for most students.
Student have missed 10 days this year because of weather and poor road conditions.
Most of the days will be added to the end of the year for the majority of the district’s schools. The district has two continuous learning schools — Happy Hollow and Asbell elementary schools — operating on slightly different schedules.
March 5 will be a day of classes for students at all schools except for Happy Hollow and Asbell.
“We understand that any weekend we’re going to be interfering with something,” said Alan Wilbourn, district spokesman.
District officials wanted to get additional instructional time with students before the state Benchmark exams in early April. Feb. 26 was considered too soon; March 12 is the state basketball finals; March 19 and 26 bookend spring break, when many families will travel. March 5 was really the only reasonable option, Wilbourn said.
District officials have said they had no intention of intruding on spring break because too many families have made other plans.
Wilbourn said the March 5 school day will be about 30 minutes shorter than a standard day.
Standard Calendar
At schools operating on a standard school calendar, Monday and April 29 were days off on which classes will now be held. On Friday, the district announced canceled days off on March 11 and April 1, respectively, for secondary and elementary students. Those days were parent-teacher conference days for younger students and career and academic counseling days for older students.
Both will now attend classes those days.
With the remainder of days added to the end of the year, standard calendar schools will be in session until June 10.
Continuous Calendar
Asbell and Happy Hollow elementary schools are on a continuous learning calendar with three weeks of “intersession” in which attendance is not required, but some students participate in remedial or accelerated learning activities.
The schools also start the year earlier and end later.
Happy Hollow and Asbell were to take an intersession break this week, but those days were converted to full school days to make up five snow days. Those makeup days mean students at those schools will not have any Saturday classes.
Those schools will make up the remainder March 31, April 1 and April 29. A final snow day was added June 15, the last day of school.
Another intersession week is still scheduled for May 2-6. The schools also maintain spring break March 21-25.