LAURINBURG — The Scotland County Board of Education met as a committee Monday and discussed how to make up the days missed due to Hurricane Florence.

At the Committee of the Whole meeting, the board discussed the different options on ways to make up the 12 days missed during Hurricane Florence.

There was also one day missed from Tropical Storm Michael, but the day was made up when a teacher professional development day was used as a regular school day.

The General Assembly recently met and voted to allow the 28 counties designated disaster areas to make up the days missed but could wave up to 20 instructional days.

North Carolina schools are required to have either 185 school days or 1,025 instructional hours with Scotland County Schools going on the latter. The typical school year would have had 1,068 instructional hours but the hurricane took out 72 hours leaving the schools with only 996 instructional hours.

“Twelve days is a lot of time to make up those standards and that information if we were to lose all 12 of those days,” said Scotland County School Public Information Officer Meredith Bounds. “And keep in mind that we’re only two months really in the school year — we still have to go through winter.”

Superintendent Ron Hargrave said that, while they could forgive the days, it gives them the hours back on paper but it doesn’t give the students the actual instruction time back.

It was presented to the board that five days be made up, giving an additional 29 hours to instructional time by extending the school year by a week. With those five days being made up, if the schools were to have days off due to snow the school hours could still be OK since the hurricane days can be waved.

The board, however, wasn’t an overall fan of adding more days to the school year and questioned what other ways days could be made up— such as through taking teacher work days or adding on time to the school days.

“Universally, I would love for us to be able to find something that would prevent us from moving graduation,” said board member Raymond Hyatt. “I hear lots of times, and I have for years not just recently, once EOG is over and they start remediation and retesting for that to be going on a week where you should be out of school you’re going to get a lot of kickback with we’re wasting time we should be home.”

The board requested that it be looked into to make up six days, forgiving the other six, by adding 15-minutes to the school day and using upcoming teacher work days as a regular school day. School officials will work out the details and present it to the board during their November meeting.

In other business:

— The board also got an update on construction of the additions at Sycamore Lane Elementary. The construction was set to be complete by late October but got pushed back due to the storm so the additions will be finished in November.

— It was requested that information about how much it would be to fix the bus camera at the last meeting and to fix the 62 that need them it would cost $95,132. There was also the option of doing 16 per year but the board agreed that it should be done at once for the safety of the students. An official vote will be done at the November board meeting.

Hargrave
https://www.laurinburgexchange.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/web1_RonHargrave.jpgHargrave

Katelin Gandee

Staff writer

Reach Katelin Gandee at 910-506-3171 or at [email protected]