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Severe weather shortens school calendar in some districts Friday, May 23, 2008 By John Lyon Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - The unusually severe weather Arkansas has experienced this year has resulted in shortened school years in several districts and demonstrated a need for better planning of school calendars, members of the state Board of Education said Thursday. In a special meeting held via conference call, the board voted Thursday to grant waivers to the Stuttgart and Earle school districts to allow them to shorten the 2007-08 school year by a few instructional days. The districts asked for the waivers because of tornado damage and related power outages that caused classes to be canceled on some campuses for two days and on others for three days. Since March, the board has granted instructional-day waivers to about 20 districts that canceled classes because of tornadoes, power outages, floods, snow and ice. Arkansas' accreditation standards require districts to hold at least 178 days of instruction per school year, but the Education Board can waive that requirement in extenuating circumstances. Some districts asked for the waivers because they exceeded the number of inclement weather days, or "snow days," built into their schedules. Other districts had no built-in weather days. Board member Mary Jane Rebick of Little Rock said school superintendents should always plan for the possibility of canceled classes. "You never know. You can lose your air conditioning, you can have a roof leak, you can have a crew tear up the road and you don't have any water. So many things can happen, and I truly believe that it's not very responsible for the superintendents to ... not build in the school days," she said. Board member Tim Knight of Arkadelphia said attendance would likely be poor if the waivers were denied and districts had to extend the school year into June, but he said he agreed with Rebick that better planning was needed. "They should put in two inclement weather days, from the southern side of the state to far northern side. I mean, it makes no difference," he said. Education Commissioner Ken James said the Education Department has no authority to mandate built-in weather days. "But we can strongly suggest, based upon the fact of the experiences this year, that they might want to do that in terms of their future calendar planning," James said. He noted that this year's weather has been far from typical. "I've been back in the state since '93, and we've never had this kind of a situation where we've had this many school districts that have been ... without power and couldn't even get in their buildings," James said. |
