Submitted by Ethan Sickels,

Rock Port R-II Superintendent

We are off and running in 2021! I hope everyone had a good holiday season and were able to stay healthy. Although we had our first snow day last week, it has been great having the students and staff back after break. I am hopeful we can continue to educate here at school as we travel through our second semester of the school year.

With this article I wanted to remind everyone of the school calendar requirements that were updated a couple of years ago. The amount of school days does not matter anymore . . . instead, districts must educate students for a minimum of 1,044 hours in a school year. For Rock Port, we were scheduled to attend 1,096.55 hours this year. We have lost some hours due to the early out from the power outage, and our snow day. However, with that 52-hour cushion scheduled in our calendar, we will not need to make up those hours.

This year, virtual/distanced learning is something every school district is learning about and implementing in different ways. We can choose to provide virtual/distance learning on snow days and count the hours the same as a traditional school day. The state allows up to 36 hours of these Alternate Methods of Instruction (AMI) hours in a school year. We may decide to utilize some of these hours as we travel further into winter.

There will be many variables to consider when making that decision, including ensuring students have the necessary materials they need at home, how many hours we have missed overall, and when the day falls. Currently, it is flexible on whether we have a snow day with no educational requirements, or if will utilize those AMI hours to educate our kids virtual/distanced. We will certainly keep you informed through text caster on what “type” of day it is. Perhaps we will get lucky and not deal with any more weather days this year (come on, just let me dream).

Thankfully, all systems are currently a go . . . we are in school, we can have athletics and activities with some restrictions, and we continue to practice mitigation strategies designed to keep our students and staff in the building. As always, I encourage you to monitor your student for symptoms of illness, especially this time of year. When in doubt, best to keep them home and send them back to school when they are symptom free.

As always, I leave you with three important words . . .

GO BIG BLUE!