School districts throughout the state are adjusting school day calendars to cope with the surging numbers of covid-19 cases and quarantines.
Universities and colleges, facing similar covid challenges, are weighing in-person classes versus online sessions, and making a range of decisions.
In Pulaski County, the three school districts that have been closed to on-site instruction since last week are reopening most campuses -- excluding nine in Little Rock -- starting today.
The school day changes are coming in a week in which the Arkansas Department of Health reported a record 6,294 active covid-19 cases among public school students and employees as of Monday. That's up from the 3,923 active cases reported Thursday.
There were 300 active cases reported in the state's private schools -- compared with 171 Thursday, and 650 active cases on college and university campuses, up from 509 cases last week, according to the state report released Tuesday.
Across the state, dozens of districts have notified the Arkansas Division of Elementary and Secondary Education of plans to temporarily transition to virtual instruction for two, three or four days this week.
Those virtual instruction days, paired with next Monday's Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday, are intended to give affected students and staffers time to recover from covid or reach the end of their quarantine periods, district leaders have told the state.
"Can't staff my classes," Hazen Superintendent Donnie Boothe told the state agency.
"Three days of AMI will give us a five-day reset, and we will hope other infections won't occur between now and Monday, Deric Owens, superintendent of Caddo Hills School District, reported to the state about his district based in Norman in Montgomery County.
Conway, Arkadelphia, Lonoke, Stuttgart, Blytheville, DeWitt, Magazine, White Hall, Prairie Grove and Hamburg are among the other districts that sent notice to the state Tuesday of plans to use some of their 10 allotted alternative measures of instruction (AMI) days this week. Some of the others were Clinton, Greenland, Cave City, Rose Bud, Star City and Hope school districts.
The Cabot, Texarkana and Helena-West Helena districts were among those that submitted their plans for using AMI days the day before.
AMI days -- initially designed for inclement weather and utility outages -- enable school campuses to close and students to do school work at their homes using online instruction or paper lessons. The days count toward the minimum 178 school days that districts are required to offer each year, and they do not have to be made up at a later point in the school year -- such as spring break or at the end of the year.
Since Jan. 1, about 77 of the state's 261 school districts and charter systems in whole or in part have or are about to temporarily shift to virtual instruction for covid-19-related reasons, Kimberly Mundell, a spokeswoman for the Division of Elementary and Secondary Education, said Tuesday. For the same period a year ago, 21 systems had shifted to virtual instruction because of covid-19.
PULASKI COUNTY
Most schools in the Little Rock, Pulaski County Special and North Little Rock districts will resume on-site instruction today but with some notable adjustments. The three Central Arkansas districts were closed to on-site instruction Thursday and Friday last week, as well as Monday and today because of surging cases of covid-19 and covid-19 exposures.
The 21,000-student Little Rock School District, which had 325 active cases among students and employees Monday, is resuming on-site instruction today at all but nine of its campuses.
Those nine campuses that will continue to provide virtual instruction to their students for the remainder of this week are Southwest High, Mabelvale Middle, Pulaski Heights Middle, J.A. Fair Kindergarten through Eighth Grade School, Don Roberts Elementary, Booker Elementary, Washington Elementary, Chicot Elementary and Rockefeller Early Childhood Center.
Little Rock Superintendent Mike Poore said in a Facebook Live video message and a letter posted on the district's website that the schools closed to on-site instruction are those that have significant numbers of absent administrators and staffers. Schools in which 10% or more of the staff is out ill or in quarantine are challenged to provide quality instruction, he said.
Poore said that successful in-person learning calls for full mask compliance, use of sanitizer and limits on group sizes. He urged those who are sick to stay home and be tested. He also urged that masks be worn in public settings, that large crowds be avoided, and that individuals receive the full complement of vaccines and booster shots.
"We will continue to assess our numbers each day," Poore wrote. "We know that changes from in-person to virtual is a challenge for parents. We hope to make modifications to delivery prior to 3 p.m. each day if at all possible."
The Pulaski County Special School District, which had 200 active covid cases Monday, will resume on-site instruction at every campus today.
Unlike the Little Rock and North Little Rock districts, the Pulaski Special district's School Board made masks optional in November. District staffers this week proposed a mask policy that would make masks mandatory at the point that there is a minimum of 30 covid cases per 10,000 people living within the district boundaries.
The board voted 5-2 Tuesday night against the proposal and retaining the practice of masks being optional.
"We're going to be in school," Superintendent Charles McNulty said Tuesday night. "We are going to be student-focused. We are going to be pushing instruction. We are going to be following our protocols that are established. I'm excited for the second semester of our work."
He also said masks are available to students and teachers in the event they choose to wear them.
"We are going to stay with masks optional," he said. "That will be the way the district will move."
The North Little Rock School District announced Tuesday that it is opening all campuses for on-site instruction today but has offered parents the option of virtual instruction through next Tuesday.
"We recognize the number of active cases and quarantines are increasing; however, we value the importance and benefits of on-site instruction for our students," Superintendent Greg Pilewski wrote to parents in a message on the district's website. "With this in mind ... we will be implementing a phased-in approach that provides the choice of on-site or online asynchronous instruction to meet the needs of our students and families.
"As a reminder, virtual, asynchronous instruction allows students to get and complete assignments daily but does not include live teaching," he said. "A student's choice of instructional delivery will be documented by on-site attendance or by logging into Google Classroom."
Pilewski issued the letter at a time when the Arkansas Department of Health reported that there were 170 active covid-19 cases among district students and employees as of Monday. That is an increase over the 119 active cases reported in the district Thursday, as reported by the state agency.
Pilewski said that since all campuses will be offering on-site instruction, starting today , all after-school activities, athletic practices and events will also resume today.
"All students will return to campus for on-site instruction on Wednesday, January 19, 2022," he said.
UALR
The University of Arkansas at Little Rock plans to begin its spring semester "as scheduled" Tuesday, Chancellor Christina Drale said in a message to the campus Monday.
"UA Little Rock has had relatively few on-campus coronavirus cases and will continue to follow health guidelines to mitigate coronavirus exposure on campus. Should it become necessary, UA Little Rock has contingency plans to pivot to virtual learning for a short period of time," Drale said.
Little Rock campus spokeswoman Angie Faller said in an email Tuesday to the Democrat-Gazette that "it is not definite that we will be having in-person classes on Tuesday," with a decision regarding classes expected today.
The university's online covid-19 case report listed 29 active cases as of Monday, including 15 student cases and 14 employee cases.
The Little Rock university's data for on-campus covid-19 testing shows that for the time period from Jan. 3-7, a total of 48 on-campus covid-19 tests have been done with 15 tests coming back positive, for a positivity rate of about 31%.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson, in describing statewide test results, noted Tuesday how the statewide positivity rate had reached 30%, based on a seven-day rolling average.
"So, it's very high in terms of the positivity rate," he said.
OTHER CAMPUSES
Some other universities in Central Arkansas have opted to begin their spring terms with virtual instruction, including the University of Central Arkansas and Philander Smith College.
UALR's William H. Bowen School of Law began courses this week with virtual instruction, the university announced last week.
Drale, in her message, described efforts to reduce the spread of covid-19 on campus, including a requirement for face coverings in classrooms and advising spaces, as well as indoors when physical distancing cannot be assured.
All of the campuses in the Arkansas State University System are beginning their spring semesters with a continuation of indoor face covering requirements, ASU System spokesman Jeff Hankins said Tuesday.
The ASU System includes Arkansas State University and Henderson State University, as well as five two-year colleges.
For each campus, chancellors were given authority by the ASU System board of trustees to make decisions about face coverings, Hankins has said.
Hankins said one system campus, ASU Mid-South, opted to delay its spring start until Tuesday, pushing it back from a scheduled Jan. 10 start date for classes. ASU Mid-South is in West Memphis and last fall had a total enrollment of about 1,100 students, including dually-enrolled high school students, according to state data.
The ASU System is the state's second-largest university system.
Trustees for the University of Arkansas System -- the state's largest university system -- in August directed campuses to implement face covering policies "regardless of vaccination status" for indoor public settings where physical distancing cannot be assured "in accordance with CDC guidance regarding the covid-19 Delta variant."