Students, parents, and teachers all anxiously watched local news channels on Feb. 4. All across Northwest Arkansas, Springdale Schools, along with all four other school districts in the area, scrolled across the bottom.
For Springdale Schools, Feb. 4 marked snow day number seven, two days over the built in five snow days. A total of ten days of school have currently been missed due to weather.
According to the Arkansas Department of Education, students are required to be in school 178 days. School districts build in 183 to accommodate the usually mild winters experienced in the area.
The past three winters, however, have challenged that with the ice storm in Jan. 2009 and the Christmas break snow storm at the end of 2009 and beginning of 2010.
Local school districts, like Fayetteville, have already made plans to remove two days they were supposed to have off in Feb. and April, and are considering Saturday classes, according to Fayetteville superintendent Vicki Thomas.
As for Springdale Schools, Superintendent Jim Rollins and Director of Communications Rick Schaeffer have confirmed that days will be added in June.
“Our plan is to add the days missed to the end of the school year,” said Schaeffer. “The final day of school was originally scheduled to be June 3. It will now be June 7, although we are not done with winter yet.”
Since Springdale Schools only have to make up three days for the time being, there are no other plans in the works.
“We are not at the point of exploring other options yet,” said Schaeffer.
There have been rumors of adding time to the school day, Saturday school, and canceling Spring Break, but this is just that-a rumor.
“Some have suggested extended school days. I’m told the state no longer allows schools to make up days in that manner anymore,” said Schaeffer. “Others have suggested utilizing Saturdays, but the problem there is attendance. Spring Break has been discussed but too many families make plans long in advance for us to use it for school.”
The problem with all of the snow days is that state-mandated tests and AP exams do not change.
“These snow days are placing increased levels of accountability on students to work through more information on their own as we have less time for classroom instruction,” said AP Biology teacher Mariana Hendrycy.
For right now, all Springdale School Board officials have to do is look for the sun and hope the snow stops.
“We hope the weather will warm up to the point that additional days in June will not be necessary,” said Schaeffer.
