Poyen School District
Poyen School District’s mission is to “Teach, Reach, and Inspire all students to Believe in their potential to Excel.” The district teaches students in a safe and nurturing environment to encourage lifelong learning and give students the desire to be productive, compassionate members of their community.
Poyen School District has 42 teachers and around 626 students with 329 attending the elementary and 297 in high school. Poyen rests in the 50th percentile among 255 Arkansas school districts and offers students and families a close-knit community of educators and administrators who provide continual educational and emotional support, both in and outside the classroom.
The district has made some important changes this year and will implement others at the start of school next season. For one, the big construction project on campus is in its final stages and will be wrapped up in time for the start of the 2022-2023 school year.
“Our Career Tech and cafeteria building is just, we’ve just finished it up, so we’ll be in it next year,” Poyen Superintendent Ronnie Kissire stated. “We were glad to get that done and get that set up for the future.”
“That’ll be right in front of the high school, and that’s where we’re looking to have drop-offs next year for elementary and high school,” Kissire stated. He said that dropping kids off in front of the new cafeteria will make it easier for them to go right in and grab breakfast in the morning before classes start.
The other big news also takes effect next semester. “The big thing for us for next year is we’re going to the fourday week, Tuesday through Friday,” Kissire said.
The district will be moving to the Tuesday-friday schedule when schools starts up again in Aug. 2022. Classes will begin at 7:40 a.m. and let out at 3:55 p.m., with some grades being release sooner to facilitate an easier pick-up routine.
Special to the MDR “The high school has the pass-through periods, so we’re still kind of trying to get our exact schedule together for next year, but we’re looking at probably letting the elementary out a few minutes early, since they don’t have the passthrough periods,” Kissire stated. “And then that way we can get those elementary car riders loaded, and then they can get over to pick up the high school.”
Kissire said public input about the four-day school week held a lot of weight in the district’s final decision.
“We had a lot of good feedback from the community,” he stated, adding that when the question of going to an alternate schedule was broached, a local church offered to implement some kind of assistance program on Mondays for families who needed help adjusting to a new weekly routine.
“We were out three Mondays, anyway, which was another factor with us looking at being out on Mondays,” Kissire stated, “Because if we were out on Fridays, then there would be those Mondays where we were out, too, would be three-day weeks.”
Some details are still being worked out, but the future transition to a four-day school week is now set in stone for the upcoming 2022-23 school year. Kissire said the district hopes everyone adjusts quickly to the new schedule.
“With COVID the past two years, parents have kind of gotten used to figuring out how to deal with it, so we think that once they kind of get a schedule, then that will help them,” he stated.
As for the pandemic, Kisire said the district dealt with the rise and fall of COVID infections by periodically implementing safety measures to curb the swelling tide of cases. “It’s been tough on everybody,” Kissire stated. “Hopefully, we’re past COVID again, you know, until the next one comes up, but we just appreciate the support that we’ve had through all this.”
“It’s been hard on our community and our faculty and our students, but they’ve all been great about doing what they need to do,” Kissire stated. “We had to implement masks two different times this year, and our students did great with that.”
“We did it because we felt we had to stop the quarantines and as soon as those dropped back down, we pulled them back out, and that’s our intention going forward,” Kissire stated. “You know, I’d love to be done with this, but if we’re not, we’ll try to use common sense again and do what we have to keep our students and our school, everybody safe.”