Six schools in the Little Rock School District are closed to on-site instruction today because of covid cases and quarantines.
Baseline Elementary, Meadowcliff Elementary, Carver Elementary, Cloverdale Middle, Pinnacle View Middle and Southwest High schools have all shifted to virtual instruction. Virtual instruction days -- also known as alternative methods of instruction days -- count toward the minimum 178 days of school that a district must provide annually.
However, a district or school can only use 10 virtual or AMI days for reasons such as widespread illness, inclement weather or utility outages. After 10 days, the school or district must make up the out-of-classroom time.
Superintendent Mike Poore acknowledged in a video statement that some of the district's schools -- Southwest High, for example -- are getting close to using all 10 alternative method of instruction days. The Little Rock School Board at its Jan. 27 meeting is expected to address the issue of how to make up missed days in ways, he said, that could include adding days to the end of the school year and/or adding minutes to make some school days longer.
In the video message, Poore relayed that he had tested positive for covid-19 earlier this month. He was away from work for five days as a result.
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"I knew I could come back to work on the sixth day," Poore said. "I came back and I felt like I was getting better, and that I was improving.
"I didn't feel 100% but I was improving. I was checking myself," he said, referring to temperature checks as a way to do that.
Jacqueline McEuen, the Little Rock district"s director of health services, who participated in the video message with Poore, said that a student or employee does not have to have a negative covid test or even re-test for covid to be able to return to work or school after being out for five days as long as the person is fever-free for 24 hours and other symptoms are improving.
"If you test positive -- and that includes a home test -- you don't need to retest," McEuen said. "You have to follow the [Arkansas Department of Health ] guidelines and the CDC guidelines to be able to come back on the day that is appropriate that the [Health Department] gives you or my Point of Contact team gives you."