The memorable snowstorms of last winter have left one Nebraska school district in hot water with state officials.
Nebraska Board of Education members voted 8-0 this week to place the East Butler Public Schools on probation for one year for failing to provide the required minimum of 1,080 instructional hours for high school students.
Education Commissioner Roger Breed said the district northwest of Lincoln did not try hard enough to make up the hours after severe weather closed the district for seven days.
The district added 16 minutes to the school day between Feb. 1 and May 13, converted three vacation days to school days and added one day to the school year. But it also let students out to attend the state girls basketball tournament and had a dozen early-dismissal days.
Four other school districts — Elkhorn, South Sarpy, Newcastle and Aurora — failed to meet the minimum of 450 hours for preschool. The board granted their requests to waive the requirement without imposing any consequences.
The Nebraska Department of Education requires schools to provide 1,032 hours of instruction for elementary and junior high schools and 1,080 hours for high school.
Tournaments, contests, parent-teacher conferences, funerals, parades and school picnics do not count as instructional days .
Schools can seek waivers for an epidemic illness, destruction of a school building or severe storm conditions, state rules say.
The winter of 2009-10 was among the worst on record, marked by a paralyzing Christmas blizzard. Omaha set a record for consecutive days with measurable snow on the ground.
Breed said East Butler's violation was not serious enough to jeopardize its accreditation — a requirement to receive state aid. But he said the board needed to send a message to districts across the state about the importance of instructional hours.
East Butler Superintendent Jim Koontz said his district tried to make up the hours but didn't plan on the success of the Tigers' girls basketball team, which reached the Class D-1 state final before losing. The district ended up with 1,074˝ hours, 5˝ short.
“If we don't qualify for the state tournament, we'd have another 13 hours, and we wouldn't be having this conversation,” he said.
To get off accreditation probation, the district will have to meet the minimum this year, Koontz said.
Melody Hobson, administrator of the state's office of early childhood education, said she was confident that the four districts without enough preschool hours did all they could to make up the time.
Joey Lefdal, principal at the Newcastle Public Schools, said his district lost 10 days to snowstorms.
“We had a horrible winter out here,” Lefdal said.
He said late starts were a big factor in the preschool's falling behind.
“I understand that stuff does happen,” board member Jim Scheer said before Wednesday's vote.
But Scheer said the bottom line was that districts did not deliver kids the services they were promised.
Koontz said he respected the decision of the board and the commissioner but was “baffled” that none of the state's other 253 districts reported that they were short of hours.
“An epic winter storm with blizzards, high winds, a lot of snow, cold temperatures, and we're the only ones that didn't get to 1,080 hours?” he said.
He said he could have added days at the end of the year, but that cuts into families' vacation time and conflicts with kids' summer jobs and teachers' plans.
He said the basketball team played in morning games on Thursday and Friday of the tournament — and he couldn't keep parents and kids away.
“The two days at the state tournament made a difference,” he said. “But we weren't going to turn down a state tournament invitation.”
In Iowa, districts have no waiver option, said Elaine Watkins-Miller, spokeswoman for the Iowa Department of Education. Districts must provide 180 days of instruction.
Watkins-Miller said she knows of no Iowa districts that provided fewer than the required instructional days. Iowa officials check instructional hours during accreditation visits every five years, she said. The state would also follow up on complaints of districts falling short, she said.
Contact the writer:
444-1077, joe.dejka@owh.com
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