HSSD back in session
Students in the Hot Springs School District will return to their campuses today after dismissing early on Tuesday and missing Wednesday due to outages caused by Tuesday’s storms.
The district lost power early Tuesday morning at Hot Springs High School, Hot Springs Middle School, Oaklawn Visual and Performing Arts Magnet School and the Jones Administration Building. Service resumed for school, but a wave of heavy rain and high winds later in the morning caused outages at the same buildings.
Superintendent Mike Hernandez said Entergy Arkansas Inc. originally informed the district that 8 p.m. Tuesday was the target for power to be restored. He said the district planned to return
to class on Wednesday if service resumed. Hot Springs instead announced at 8 p.m. Tuesday schools would not be open on Wednesday.
“I was talking to some Entergy folks over the phone and they actually reached out to us and told us they didn’t see any way they would have power back in that circuit until sometime today,” Hernandez said.
“We’ve got a lot parents that have to make arrangements and we did not want to wait to see if by some chance the power was going to get back on by the time to go to school.”
More than 11,000 Entergy customers were left without power after the storms. Hernandez said Entergy informed him the outage at the three schools persisted because of issues with their particular circuit.
Power was restored to all of the schools at about 1 p.m. Wednesday.
“I definitely want to express my gratitude to Entergy for their hard work getting us back up,” Hernandez said.
Tuesday counted as a full day based on a new state law. Requirements for school days were adjusted after many districts missed multiple weeks of school due to inclement weather.
“Schools have that flexibility that they can start at 10 a.m. or earlier and count it as a full day or they can go to 1 p.m. and count it as a full day,” Hernandez said. “So we will take advantage of that. The day we missed today, we’ll have to make up.”
Hernandez said district employees will help determine how the missed day on Wednesday will be made up. Districts now have the flexibility to add an hour at the start or the end of some school days, or both, to make up missed time.
School districts incorporate potential makeup days into the academic calendar. Hernandez said the district can use a makeup day or add an extra day at the end of the school year. He said the new flexibility allows the district to explore multiple options.
“There may be some more winter days we have to adjust for,” Hernandez said. “We want to make sure we get as many days in ahead of the tests that we can. Of course now, the testing will come a little bit later this year with the new ACT. So it won’t be as bad as it has been.”