Decisions made months ago will make recent days missed because of winter weather a little easier to accept when the end of the school year comes around for students in Eureka Springs.
The school district was forced to cancel classes from Monday, Jan. 26, through Thursday, Jan. 29, but thanks to the use of a nontraditional calendar throughout the year, extra time added to each day will be used to make up those days.
“We have almost like an extended day, going 15 minutes early every day,” superintendent Bryan Pruitt said of the nontraditional calendar, which helps the district reach the required 1,068 hours per school year. “So, we have over five days built in by doing that.
“We’ve missed four days [so far] so we’ve still got a couple of days to play with in case we do need them. Right now we’re still in good shape because of that.”
The thought of adding 15 minutes to the start of each school day isn’t always popular when each school year calendar is approved, Pruitt said.
Last week’s winter weather make it all worth it, though, he said.
“I know that early on we had a couple of people fussing about our days, because they’re so long, but when we miss these snow days, yes, we’re going 15 minutes early, and boy do they forget that real quick,” Pruitt said. “So yeah, right now they’re tickled to death that we go 15 minutes earlier because our four days are covered.
“If we’re fortunate enough to make it through the rest of the year [without any more snow days] then we might have a couple of days that we could take Pruitt said the district considered having classes on Thursday, Jan. 29.
“We still had enough slick spots that when I tried to weigh out the options, I’m like: ‘We have more risks of injury than we have benefits of being here,’ ” he said. “So, that’s what I decided, that we were just going to wait another day. And fortunately, Friday, as far as I know, we went unscathed and didn’t have any major accidents.”
The district still has two days “banked” that can be used before any extra days will have to be added to the academic calendar, Pruitt said.
“We still have two days cushion,” he said. “Hopefully, we can make it through the month and things start looking a lot better.”
