After weeks on the brink, the Park Hill School District announced Tuesday it will close later this week due to the ongoing pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Due to the high number of sick and absent staff, the district will close Thursday, Jan. 27 and Friday, Jan. 28. All schools, offices, facilities and programs will close, including the Park Hill Online Academy, Adventure Club and tuition preschool.
No online learning will be conducted either, also due to lack of staffing.
Late last week, the district issued a letter to families, warning them of possible upcoming disruptions. On Thursday, Jan. 20, the district had more than 200 staff members out due to illness — an all-time record — and the district was only able to cover about half of those absences with traditional substitutes.
“We’ve had custodians answering phones and everyone with the proper certification has been covering classrooms, from our specials teachers to our instructional coaches to our building and district administrators,” the district stated in the letter. “This means that we haven’t been able to provide some key services.
Last week, district officials warned Park Hill was “reaching a breaking point.” That point arrived this week with continued rising numbers of sick staff.
The district will not use any of its five alternative methods of instruction days to go to virtual learning, officials say, “because we will not have enough healthy staff members to do this.”
The two days will not be made up at the end of the school year.
The district also put out a call for help in the community, urging parents to keep their children at home if they are sick. Additionally, they ask anyone interested in applying to be a substitute teacher to visit the website for more information, at parkhill.k12.mo.us.
“We understand that this will be incredibly challenging for our families, so we want you to know that we exhausted every option before we got to this,” district officials stated on Tuesday. “We will continue to monitor the situation to try to make the best decisions possible for our students, our staff and our families.”
At a board of education meeting earlier this month, two no-tax-increase propositions were approved for placement on the April 5 election ballot.
These questions involve no tax increase above the current levy, and would pay for facilities updates and maintenance, as well as construction of a 12th elementary school.
The board also approved the 2022-2023 academic calendar. A calendar committee made up of families, district administrators and school staff members used feedback from a family and staff survey to develop the calendar.
The first day of school will be Aug. 22 and May 26, 2023 will be the last day of school, depending on inclement weather days.