The latest round of winter weather has forced some school districts into difficult decisions about how to make up time lost to snow days this school year.

The Bentonville School District, which saw its ninth snow day Monday, is now considering Saturdays to help recover lost time, Superintendent Michael Poore said. The subject likely will be discussed at the School Board meeting scheduled for today.

Previously, the district had decided to use two holidays — Martin Luther King Day and Presidents Day — and add days to the end of the school year to make up missed days. Bentonville’s school year would not end until June 9 at the earliest under that plan.

“The challenge you get down to is, you look at Saturdays, and our high school has something they’re hosting almost every Saturday right there on their campus,” Poore said.

The board, district employees and the state would have to approve a decision to have school on a Saturday, Poore said.

The timing of makeup days matters because teachers and students are preparing for state-mandated standardized tests. The testing schedule begins March 11.

The Springdale School District already has decided to have school Saturday, March 8, to make up Monday’s canceled day. Monday was its eighth snow day, but it had five snow days built into its calendar. If there are more missed days because of weather, Springdale will cut into its spring break and use March 24 and 25 as makeup days.

Recent snow days have caused students to lose a lot of classroom time, said Jared Cleveland, Springdale’s deputy superintendent for personnel. School districts are required by state law to have 178 school days with 360 minutes of instruction each.

“What we’re going to have to do is recover those days as best we can,” he said.

District officials are trying to place makeup days before benchmark testing so student preparation for the tests isn’t affected, Cleveland said. One or two makeup days at the end of the year won’t make a big difference in students’ preparedness.

“The more days you miss, the more you are going to be unprepared to do your work,” he said. “It’s about investing in the students.”

Fayetteville, which missed its ninth day of school Monday, will use previously scheduled in-service days and days at the end of the year to make them up. If a 12th day is missed, Fayetteville students will go to school Saturday, May 3, to make it up.

The Rogers School District, like Bentonville, would add seven school days to the end of its calendar to make up snow days but is not considering Saturdays at this time, said Janie Darr, superintendent.

“If we miss more days, we may go back to the school board and ask for more alternatives,” Darr said.

The biggest problem with snow days is they disrupt the continuity of learning, Darr said.

“You have to go back and review, just like at the end of the summer when kids come back to school,” Darr said. “It also disrupts families who have two working parents, because one of the parents will have to stay home from work unless they have some kind of child care during the day.”

Michael Crouch, school performance evaluator in the Office for Education Policy at the University of Arkansas, said there’s no correct way for districts to make up lost school days. It depends on what the community’s preference is, he said.

However, extending the school year past May might help students retain more knowledge heading into next school year.

“I have not heard much about how this is an opportunity to combat that summer learning loss, but perhaps there is a silver lining,” Crouch said.

Some local superintendents want the Arkansas Legislature to give them more flexibility to make up lost instruction time. Options that have been discussed include adding minutes on to school days and starting the school year earlier than the state-mandated Aug. 19.