South Pike school officials are preparing to promote and graduate students without the benefit of state tests and most fourth-quarter school work and course examinations.
Superintendent Donna Scott told board members Thursday morning that state tests from the third-grade gate test to high school subject-area tests have been canceled statewide for the year.
“The students have been given a reprieve,” Scott said. Students can be graduated or promoted without the test results this year, but “they still have to meet district requirements,” she added.
“Do we know that students won’t come back this year?” board member Luke Lampton asked.
“Even if we go back to school, there will be no tests,” Scott said.
She noted that states around Mississippi, including Louisiana and Alabama, have already closed schools for the remainder of the school year.
Board attorney Lem Mitchell asked if current third-graders would eventually have to take the third-grade gate test and pass it.
“For them, that’s gone,” Scott said. “Any of those students that were struggling, they have gotten a blessing.”
Scott said the district would look at those students who were failing and make a determination on whether they might have been able to pull up their grades.
“We might see if they were failing and what would have happened if they had a 100 average for the fourth nine weeks,” Scott said. “If they would still fail, they’ll fail. The others, if their grades could be pulled up, we’ll look at the work they were given to see how they were doing.”
On another concern of the board, graduation, Scott said it was unlikely that the district would be able to have a traditional ceremony on time.
“There have been a lot of suggestions about how to handle that on (statewide) conference calls,” Scott said. “Different districts have talked about virtual graduations, but I’m not sure our people would want that.”
She said other ideas, such as having a series of small ceremonies open to 50 people at a time when possible, would be hard for the district to coordinate.
“I think it would be best to wait until we can have large gatherings again,” Scott said, though she lamented that that might not be till August or even later.
Board member Eva Andrews said the district’s coliseum is a large facility, and she suggested the district might eventually be able to allow each senior two tickets for parents or other supporters while spacing the attendees out to the recommended social distancing of six feet.
In a related matter, board members agreed to a blanket waiver of district policies that are affected by the state’s closure orders.
Scott said most of those policies are related to state laws and regulations, such as holding a 180-day school year for students, or the requirements for giving and passing state tests.
The actual policies were not listed in the board’s agenda information, because Scott said she did not want to miss waiving a policy that needed to be waived.
