BELLE —The Maries R-2 Board of Education on Thursday voted 7-0 to implement a late start procedure for the 2020-21 school year.

“The community has asked before why the R-2 school district doesn’t participate in late start,” said Superintendent Dr. Lenice Basham.

The question led Basham to conduct a survey in January to determine parent and staff willingness to support a late start procedure for inclement weather days and resulted in many community members willing to give the idea a try.

“We started with surveys of K-12 and all the parents who responded said ‘it works for me, but it won’t work for kindergarten,” Basham told the board Feb. 27. “I do think they were trying to be conscientious that it may work for them, but maybe not for everyone.”

Based on the survey responses, Basham decided to do a survey of just the elementary school. She reported the anonymous survey results to the school board which included 68 responses from the Kindergarten through sixth grade community with 67.6 percent in favor and 32.4 percent against. Of those surveyed, 24 commented.

“We still have to drive 10 minutes to get to a snow route and a late start would make it so I couldn’t even work that day,” one parent wrote in.

Another said late start, “decreases missing school for snow days and increases summer vacation time.”

“We found that a majority of the elementary community felt that it was better than missing school,” Basham said.

The first general survey resulted in 350 responses and was overwhelmingly positive with 74 percent for the late start and 26 percent against. The category included 62 comments.

“If it’s bad, just cancel,” one person responded.

Another said, “I’m in favor of this if it would help keep from making up so many snow days.”

One responder said they thought Mondays would be good snow make-up days, while another thought attendance would be low.

Staff opinion on late start was overwhelmingly high. Out of the 65 responses, 89.2 percent were for and 10.8 percent against.

“Although I think it is a great idea, would we still have to make-up hours lost from late start? How would the high school bell schedule work,” one staff member asked.

Another commented, “we need to have our students in class as much as possible, so I am all for it.”

Basham updated the board on missed days for the year-to-date.

“We’ve missed eight days due to snow and one day due to the water main break,” Basham told board members about the 2019-20 school year. “The day missed because of the water main break has to be made up, it doesn’t count under weather exemptions.”

Basham thought two of the days this year could have been eligible for late start.

“I do think we could have saved two days where, at the time that we had to make a decision, the roads were not safe, but by  9 o’clock the roads had been cleared and everything was good to go,” she said. “We are to the point now that we only have to make up half of what we miss, up to 60 hours. Our last day this year is going to be May 21.”

The board’s second concern about next year’s snow days stems from a law Gov. Mike Parson signed last year that disallows schools to start earlier than, Aug. 25, or 14 days before Labor Day.

“The problem we are foreseeing is the fact that we have to start five days later,” Basham said. “The legislature has said we can’t begin before Aug. 25 and there is no getting around that unless they pass new legislation that makes us exempt from that.”

Starting school later in the year, compounded with a large number of snow days could push schools like Belle with four-day weeks into late May before they are released for the summer. That also moves summer school into mid-June.

Late start would not be implemented until the 2020-21 school year and the procedure would be included in the Student Handbook.

“If we are going to set it, the guidelines would be we would like to call it the night before or by 5 a.m. the morning of,” Basham said. “If we couldn’t make a decision about a late start by 5 a.m., it would be a snow day.”

Students would still be picked up by bus either by a regular route or snow route.

“If anything we are going to have to look at attendance during those late starts the first times we do it, think about the impact that it has,” she said. “I think it is going to give us a good indication of how things will go.”

While she doesn’t know how the idea will work, she said a  lot of schools use late start, so it must work well for them.