MOUNT VERNON — Winter weather this year has caused major headaches for both parents and school administrators alike. School calendars routinely include five scheduled calamity makeup days, but additional two-hour school delays and outright school closings have some districts scrambling to make sure students meet the state minimum attendance requirements.
Kindergarten pupils are not exempt from attendance requirements, and local districts are being flexible and tweaking their plans to make sure the young learners are taken care of.
Centerburg’s superintendent Dorothy Holden said the two-hour delays do not affect Centerburg morning kindergarten classes as much as some other schools. “We do not cancel morning kindergarten,” she said, “we slide the times. The morning classes only lose an hour and afternoon loses an hour on a two-hour delay. However, we are over the five-day limit on closing. The elementary has been closed seven days and the high school is at eight.” Parents will be notified when more specific information is available.
Clear Fork has all-day, every-day kindergarten, so kindergarten makeup will be the same as the rest of the classes, said superintendent Dan Freund.
Dan Harper, Danville’s superintendent, said, “Our kindergarten is all-day, every day so they will make up the days just like grades one through 12. The same has applied to the two-hour delays.”
East Knox superintendent John Marschhausen said the district more than meets the attendance requirement for kindergarten because of the all-day, everyday kindergarten schedule. “Our kindergarten students will attend school, and makeup days, with all of our other students,” he said.
Fredericktown’s administration is working with staff to add an extra hour to morning kindergarten to make up time lost due to the two-hour delays. Superintendent Dan Humphrey said as soon as the details are worked out, they will be communicated to parents.
Things are a little more complicated in the Mount Vernon City Schools; some kindergarten pupils attend full days, others do not. Those kindergartners who do not typically attend extended day classes will have to make up calamity days. Superintendent Steve Short said the district is looking at a makeup schedule on a building-by-building basis.
“Each building,” Short said, “is going to work with its extended day teachers and the partner elementary school — like Wiggin Street and East, and Pleasant Street and Dan Emmett — and try to come up with (makeup) days that best fit in their buildings’ schedules. It will not be a set districtwide day.”
One of the reasons for the individual schedules is to make sure it is a quality, educationally sound day for the students, rather than “a movie theater day.” Some of the schools do have field days, Short said, and if the kindergarten pupils attend all day, that could count as one make-up day. Morning kindergarten students could stay the whole day, eat lunch, and go to either the extended-day kindergarten teacher or a different teacher in the afternoon. All-day educational field trips, like to the Columbus Zoo, are another option.
Another reason to work around individual building schedules, Short said, is that in using extended-day kindergarten teachers for make-up times, the district will not have to incur the cost of substitutes.
“We’re hoping to get the make-up done as much as we can in April,” Short said. “One thing we have to look at when planning make-up days is the Ohio Achievement Tests. Those are in April, too, and so is kindergarten registration for next year.”
Short said parents should be on the lookout for further information from the building principals.
