President’s Day will no longer be a day off for students in the Eureka Springs School District.
The Monday, Feb. 19, holiday will be one of three make-up days for classes that were called off because of the recent winter weather. The other two make-up days will be Wednesday, May 22, and Thursday, May 23, two days that were tacked on at the end of the school calendar, according to superintendent Bryan Pruitt.
“In our calendar that we proposed to our Personnel Policies Committee, who has to approve the school calendar and vote on it before our board approves it, we had in that policy that if we missed a certain amount of snow days we would use President’s Day as a make-up day,” Pruitt said. “Then we had five days built in at the end of the calendar. So, we’ve missed three days so far so we’ve added two days at the end, but we’re still a long ways of being out of winter so who’s to say what will happen?”
Pruitt said the decisions to take a snow day are not always easy.
“We very carefully try to do what’s best for the safety of the staff and students,” he said. “It’s tough to make that call. This last one, it looked like it was going to melt off real early so we looked at a delayed start. We were going to start at 10 a.m., but at 6:30 we still had a parking lot that was solid with ice. It just wasn’t worth it so we called it. It was a good call because after lunch we still had ice.
“It’s just never easy. A lot of people always get on social media and have an opinion about it, but it’s always easy when you’re not the one to make the call.”
In past years, districts could use Alternative Methods of Instruction days where students could do assignments from home and districts didn’t have to use a snow day.
AMI days, which were authorized by a 2017 state law, were popular among many districts during winter weather months and became wellknown in every district during COVID-19.
Last year, districts in the county had anywhere from seven to nine AMI days because of weather, which all counted toward the mandated 178-day school year. Not anymore.
When the state legislature passed the LEARNS Act, a $50,000 salary minimum was enacted for all teachers and the law stipulated that districts across the state would receive state money to help support those raises. However, the LEARNS Act states that for districts to be eligible for funds to implement the salary increases “a public school district shall be open for on-site, in-person instruction for at least” 178 days or 1,068 hours.
“Back during COVID we proved we could do virtual, but with the LEARNS law it says you have to have 178 days of face-to-face instruction,” Pruitt said. “The state says they didn’t take away AMI days. Well, they didn’t, however, the law says you have to do 178 face-to-face days. You can take an AMI day but it doesn’t mean anything.”
Pruitt said he’s just hoping last week’s round of winter weather is the last for this school year.
“I’m hoping for 60 degrees all the way to April,” he said. “Then bring out the hot.”
