State approves AISD waiver
By Sandy Morris
Classes in the Albany schools will resume on Monday morning, March 22 following a week-long spring break, and AISD students and staff were happy to learn that their upcoming Easter weekend will not be cut short.
AISD superintendent Jonathan Scott announced last week that due to Winter Storm Uri and its state-wide impact, the Texas Education Agency had approved the “Missed School Days Waiver” that his office had applied for last month.
Scott explained that because of the unusual circumstances, TEA offered each impacted school district the opportunity to apply for a waiver, and Albany ISD, along with other districts across the state, was required to provide documented evidence of the reason school was not held during the storm.
“We were fortunate to maintain electricity and water during that week, unlike many other areas, but we had leaks on our campuses that would have made it impossible to conduct in-person classes,” said Scott. “And we learned really quickly that first Monday morning that remote learning was not going to be possible because of access and outages around us.”
In a normal year, the district would have needed to make up 830 minutes in addition to the two built-in bad weather days that had been built into the 2020-2021 school calendar.
“I was notified last week that TEA accepted Albany ISD’s application, so we will not be required to use the bad weather days,” said Scott. “The current school calendar remains unchanged.”
The make-up days were Good Friday and the Monday after Easter, but now students will not have to attend school those days despite missing more than a week of classes.
AISD students will be off for the Easter weekend on Friday, April 2 and Monday, April 5.
Spring Break
Classes in the Albany schools will resume on Monday morning, March 22 following the week-long spring break.
The tardy bells will ring as usual at 7:55 a.m. at Nancy Smith Elementary School and 8:00 a.m. at the secondary campus.
The remainder of the semester will include mandatory state testing.
