DECATUR, Ark. — Students at Decatur schools are set to resume classes on Wednesday after deadly tornadoes left a wake of destruction throughout the city just days prior.
The Decatur School District announced on Tuesday that students will return to class on May 29 at 9 a.m. but that attendance is voluntary, and absences will be excused for the next three days.
School will begin one hour later and end one hour earlier each day. Buses will run one hour later in the mornings and earlier in the afternoons as well, the district said.
The following is the school day schedule for the rest of the week:
- Wednesday — 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
- Thursday — 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
- Friday — 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Grades for the spring semester will be finalized as of May 24, and high school students are being offered the choice to take semester exams to improve their grade.
The district says that it will continue to provide students access to breakfast and lunch, as well as showers, laundry, and device charging.
"Decatur High School gym will continue to serve as a community relief center providing A/C, showers, laundry services, and Wi-Fi from 9 a.m. - 3 p.m. daily this week," the district said.
Steve Watkins, Superintendent for Decatur schools, told 5NEWS that while the schools sustained little damage, a lot of students have impacted by the storms.
"We were supposed to be in regular classes through this week. But due to the storms that came through over the weekend, we really did not feel like it was safe to open school this morning," Watkins said. "From the standpoint of the community, there are still a lot of places that are out of electricity, there's electrical crews out all over the place. It's still a lot of storm debris that people are sorting through and things like that."
Watkins says that while the school will be open, it won't be school in the traditional sense.
"We're opening it up more as a community resource for people to take advantage of that," Watkins explained. "So the school is going for the next three days to close out the school year is going to act more as a community service piece for our community than it is a school."
The superintendent says that the goal of letting students into the classroom these next three days is to recreate some stability and normalcy for those affected.
"School will open tomorrow for the students and we'll get them in and let them do trying to get back to some stability in normality of you know, coming in and going to school and closing out the year," Watkins said.
Watkins says that the school will be open to anybody, not just students.
"We're open for anybody in the community. Whether you're a parent of one of our students or not," Watkins said. "It's open for the community at large today and will be for the rest of the week as well."
Watkins adds that teachers and students alike have been working across the area to help out.
"We had a great group of students out this morning that came up on their time to help out and they were out cleaning up debris around the school. And then some of the teachers got here, and they loaded up in some buses and went out into the community and had been helping out in the community all day," Watkins said.
The district's summer program will start Monday at 8 a.m. and operate on normal times. Watkins says he doesn't believe the storms will affect anything involving the summer program.
To donate or receive help, the district's Family Liaison Kris Davis can be contacted at (417) 880-1553.
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