Class Is In Session

Students in Carroll County are back this week to reading, writing and arithmetic.

The 2024-2025 school year got underway for students in the Berryville School District on Monday, Aug. 12, and for students in the Green Forest School District on Tuesday, Aug. 13.

The Eureka Springs School District begins classes on Wednesday, Aug. 14.

BERRYVILLE SCHOOLS

Students in Berryville kicked off the back-to-school week on Monday and superintendent Owen Powell said midway through the day that things were going smoothly.

“We had a really good morning,” Powell said. “It’s good to see the kids and teachers and everybody back. There were a lot of smiling faces and just a great start to the school year.”

With the addition of the new ABC Preschool building, Powell said there were some tweaks with student drop-offs for the kindergarten through second grade building.

“We had to make some adjustments to our buses unloading in the morning at the K-2 building due to the preschool,” Powell said. “You always have to keep car riders and buses separated, and anytime you make changes you’re always just a little nervous about those. But, I was over there watching that this morning and it all went really well.”

The only changes that students will notice is an additional nine minutes added to the bell schedule, Powell said.

“That was so we can bank minutes that we can use for weather days,” the superintendent said.

While the new school year began Monday for students, teachers and staff have been back since last week, taking time for professional development and preparing for the new year, Powell said.

“We had a good week last week with teachers and faculty,” he said. “We had professional development all week long. Sometimes it can probably be a little bit of information overload, but it went really well. It was really good to get our teachers back in the classrooms. I know they were excited to see the kids and start the school year.”

Powell said he felt good about enrollment for the year.

“Even this morning we had a lot of students enrolling at every campus,” he said. “And last week we had quite a few new enrollees with open house and things like that. Enrollment looks really healthy.”

GREEN FOREST SCHOOLS

For the first time in many years, Green Forest opened the new school year with a new leader as David Gilmore took over after the resignation of longtime superintendent Matt Summers.

“It’s really exciting for me in a new role and everything,” Gilmore said Monday, Aug. 12. “I get to kind of see what happens at all levels of the district instead of just being responsible for one building. I’ll probably start my day off around the elementary and see all those kids coming in. There’s a lot of excitement there, people dropping off their kids for the first time. I really want to see that again because I haven’t seen that since I was an elementary principal.

“I want to spend the day getting around campuses and make sure things are going well and people have what they need. I want to try to provide whatever resources and any kind of help we can provide for them.”

There won’t be any policy changes going into the new year, Gilmore said.

“We’re just going to try to be consistent in enforcing policies, like our cell phone policy,” he said. “Other than that, not any changes.

“Teachers are getting used to some new curriculum we ordered across the district. The state has got a push for high-quality instructional materials, and we’re trying to make that as consistent as we can across the district so multiple grade spans have similar curriculum. The kids get used to it, the teachers are used to it. The staff spent some time on that this past week, going through it and looking at standards, getting ready for the year with their lesson plans.”

Enrollment could be up a bit from last year, the new superintendent said.

“I think we’ll be about the same or possibly up a little bit,” Gilmore said. “Kids can transfer around a little easier now than they could in the past and some kids have come and some kids have gone. We’ve had a lot of people at open house enrolling new students and then we have had lots of new kids coming in and doing their schedules and everything.

“I think we’ll be up just a little bit. I could see us up over 1,400 kids.”