Meetings of the Eureka Springs School Board take on a different quality during the summer. The three principals do not make their usual monthly reports, and the board has more time to review policies and make adjustments.
On Monday, July 13, the board looked at results from standardized Atlas tests for first and second grades. Eureka Springs is part of a co-op with 20 other schools, and the Atlas results placed Eureka near the top in math and language testing.
Among first-grade students, 74 percent tested either advanced or proficient in language arts, and 78 percent met the standards in math. Those numbers fell to 62 percent for both math and language among second graders. Supt. Bryan Pruitt also released numbers on the students at the lower end of test results. Eureka Springs only had two second-grade students at the lowest level of performance. By comparison, both Berryville and Green Forest had a third of their second-grade students at the lowest level.
Pruitt said the test results will help the district identify those students most in need of additional help.
In other business:
- School board members may attend a meeting by Zoom, although they do not receive credit for attending the meeting. The state requires that school districts must make a Zoom link available to the public if they create a Zoom accommodation for a board member.
- The state has increased maternity leave from eight to 12 weeks, and this district has added a five-day leave for fathers, on the recommendation of the personnel policies committee. Board member Ginger Johnson asked about increasing the length of paternity leaves, but Pruitt said the costs would be prohibitive. He also pointed out the importance of keeping teachers in their classrooms as much as possible.
- The federal government has raised the amount a school district can spend without going through a bid process from $10,000 to $15,000.
- Seniors have traditionally had latitude to take part of the school day off if they have already completed their graduation requirements. The state will still allow seniors to leave school for part of the day, but only for academic reasons. Students can take college courses or the C4 vocational classes. Other training programs, such as cosmetology school, also qualify.
- The district will have a full-time security officer, independent of the Eureka Springs Police Department. The district will provide the security officer with a vehicle.