It’s snow secret
Editor’s note: This is one in a series of articles marking the 50th Anniversary of Hartselle City Schools.
On February 16, 2011 the Hartselle Enquir er published an arti cle entitled Schools Plan Make-Up Days. In it, then-Superintendent Dr. Mike Reed explained that Hartselle City Schools had been closed for five days in the 2010-2011 school year and that a day had to be added to the school calendar in order for the number of days of instruction to meet the requirements of Alabama law. One of Hartselle’s missed days had been due to water problems in the city, and the additional four days were missed due to bad weather.
Since 2011, the State has revised its ruling to consider the instructional hours within a school year instead of the instructional days. Virtual days are also an option now. None of these were an option then, and school districts had to form a plan.
Morgan County Schools had announced that they would be adjusting their school calendar to extend their school year into the first week in June. Reed and school leaders were hesitant to do the same because they longed for an additional day of instruction ahead of spring State testing instead of at the end of the school year. I was Principal at Barkley Bridge Elementary School at the time, and I can remember that, though it is not mentioned in the Enquirer article, we also discussed the number of students’ families and teachers’ families who took their summer vacations over the Memorial Day weekend and would be compromised by a February change in the school calendar to extend the school year.
And so the Saturday plan went forward. In the article, Reed is quoted as saying, “the Saturday school day will be like a normal day with students and teachers reporting at their normal times and bus routes running as they would any weekday.” The schools additionally served breakfast and lunch.
I can remember hyping the day in the week leading up to the big event. My fellow Principals and I were concerned about student attendance on that day and concerned that poor attendance could hurt the students who missed the instruction and could also hurt our school attendance percentages as tracked by the State. To encourage students to attend, I worked with teachers and the BBES PTO to provide students in attendance with little door prizes distributed throughout the school Saturday. Though attendance was lower than would have been typical, Barkley Bridge did have the highest percentage of students present on that day in the school district.
I can remember that when the fifth grade students of 2011 held their Moving On ceremony at Barkley Bridge to celebrate their moving to the sixth grade, then-Guidance Counselor Charlotte Riddlehoover reminded them from the school stage that they were Hartselle’s first students to attend on a regular-schoolday-Saturday.
I have always thought that was true, but I learned from David Burleson that Professor Burleson’s diaries indicate that students once attended school on Saturdays and had Sundays and Mondays off for their weekend. In fact, old records also indicate that students in at least one school year long ago attended school on Thanksgiving Day.
That’s the funny thing about being dedicated to commitments and to work and to excellence if you look back far enough and wait around long enough, most of what’s new was also old, and most of what’s old will become new again.
