Legislators hear snow-day pleas

178-day year called too rigid

State legislators on Monday expressed interest in exploring different ideas during the 2015 session about how school districts make up for snow days, but in the meantime they praised West Fork School District for its plans to make up nearly all 21 days it has missed.

Wintry weather this school year has meant about one-third of the state’s school districts and charter schools canceled more than 10 days of school.

The Arkansas Department of Education has received requests from 75 school districts and charter schools asking for make-up waivers from the state Board of Education, department spokesman Kimberly Friedman said. If granted, the waivers would excuse snow days that otherwise would push the end of the school year into the middle of June for some districts. The department will add on any requests districts mailed by last Friday’s deadline..

The state board will consider the requests during the March 20-21 meeting. The board has the authority to waive the requirement that every district hold 178 days of instruction.

The latest winter storm hit early last week and prompted the Department of Education to extend the deadline for waiver requests. Districts with more than 10 snow days are eligible for a waiver, according to a department memo.

Fourteen districts requesting waivers have accumulated 20 or more snow days. That includes the Jasper School District, where the number of snow days varies by campus with 19.5 snow days at the Jasper campus, 20 at the Kingston campus and 21 at the Oark campus.

Before the winter storm that hit March 2, West Fork had accumulated 18 snow days, Commissioner of Education Tom Kimbrell said Monday at a joint meeting of the House and Senate education committees.

“They found a way to make up for all 18,” Kimbrell said. “Their faculty, their administration, their School Board all voted on the makeup days they’ve had. I know their main goal was to try to make up as many of those days as they could before the assessment tests.”

The first round of state testing begins today with the Grade 11 Literacy Examination, though most state testing takes place in April.

Kimbrell told the committee that moving the test dates even two weeks would cost more than $2 million. The tests include written components that require human scorers, and moving the test would require hiring more scorers and then leasing space to house them.

The state is moving to computer-based assessments that will provide more flexibility for giving key exams, and test dates will move to May, he said.

State Rep. Fred Love, D-Little Rock, asked Kimbrell to send legislators on the committee the plan West Fork had used to make up the snow days.

“Can we see that plan? Love asked. “Because there are all these other school districts saying it isn’t possible to make up all those days. I would be interested to see how they made that happen.”

An approved waiver for West Fork would mean students would not have to make up three snow days taken last week, but students would make up the 18 snow days taken before March, West Fork Superintendent John Karnes said.

The district has already made up several days, which included returning two days early from winter break. The district will give up spring break and add nine days to the end of the school year, making the last day of school June 6.

Other school districts have scheduled Saturday school, turned previously planned student holidays into school days and tacked on days to the end of the year.

Kimbrell told the committee that he wasn’t sure how many waivers the state board would grant next week. The requests are lumped together on the board’s consent agenda, but the board could consider requests individually.

The last time the State Board considered granting waivers because of bad weather days was in 2010 when seven districts submitted requests, Friedman said. The board approved requests that year from the Cave City, Deer/Mount Judea, Highland, Mountain View, Salem, Twin Rivers and Viola districts.

Richard Abernathy, executive director for the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators, said he thinks the accreditation standards that require six hours of instruction for 178 days warrant a review after such an unusual winter.

Abernathy said he thinks districts need more options for making up school days than scheduling Saturday sessions like so many have done. If the standards went by hours instead of days, school districts would have the option of extending the school day.

“That option does not exist,” he said.

During the hearing, Rep. Charlotte Douglas, R-Alma, asked whether districts could tack hours onto existing school days to make up time. Kimbrell responded that because of the way the law is written, adding hours was not allowed under current statute.

“This is something we can look at in the 2015 session,” Douglas said.

The Legislature’s 2014 Fiscal Session is expected to wrap up this week. The fiscal sessions were adopted six years ago and require the Legislature to convene in a shorter session to discuss primarily fiscal matters every other year.

The Mammoth Spring and Viola school districts, which are both adjacent to the Missouri border in northern Arkansas, tied for missing the most number of days, 23, and both requested the State Board to waive 13 snow days.

Mammoth Spring Superintendent David Turnbough said the district of 460 students this year has experienced one of the worst winters since the late 1970s, when residents remember being out of school the entire month of January and half of February.

The district’s calendar already omits holidays that other districts celebrate, limits the Thanksgiving break to three days instead of five and schedules school days on federal holidays in January and February, Turnbough said. Students in Mammoth Spring will be in school during spring break.

“Our community relies heavily on the tourism industry related to the Spring River area,” Turnbough said. “Students and faculty members are involved in those summer jobs. We have always respected that and tried to end school before June 1.”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/11/2014

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