South Pike officials have joined their colleagues from the north end of the county in delaying their students’ return to school.
Set for Monday at a special meeting in July, the opening for South Pike schools was pushed back again on Thursday by a week, to Aug. 17, by unanimous vote of the school board.
South Pike’s opening date now matches both North Pike’s and McComb’s.
Superintendent Dr. Donna Scott said the delay might provide a slightly better environment for students to return to school if the local rate of COVID-19 infections slows somewhat.
She said the delay would also allow some supplies ordered late or taking a long time to arrive to be delivered before schools open.
Among those supplies are “sneeze guard” partitions for the elementary school classrooms.
The delayed start also necessitated other changes in the school calendar.
Monday, the former start day for students, is now a professional development day for teachers. Schools are officially closed the rest of next week, though Scott said teachers may work in their classrooms if they choose.
Those days cut from the beginning of the school year are mostly being added to the end of the school year, with graduation and the last day for both students and teachers being moved to May 27. Before the change, the last day for students was May 21, graduation was May 22 and the last teacher day was May 24.
To accommodate the change and avoid pushing the end of school any later, a holiday on Presidents Day in February was eliminated. The district’s fall break in October was eliminated on July 23 when the board adopted a revised calendar that moved the start of school from Aug. 6 to Monday.
Scott said district officials are trying to comply with Gov. Tate Reeves’ request that schools start no earlier than Aug. 17, She said the district has until June 30 to get in the required 180 days of student attendance.
However, “we don’t want to suck up all of June at the front end,” Scott said. “If we do that, we’ll have no days available to work with if there’s some kind of catastrophe.”
She pointed out that there have been a number of tropical disturbances in the Atlantic Ocean this year, and the heart of the hurricane season is just approaching.
She also noted that if Reeves found it necessary to issue another closure for state schools because of COVID-19, those days would likely be forgiven.
