Understanding AMI Days, Snow Days, and MakeUp Days
AMI Days: Beginning with the 2020-2021 school year, the Missouri Department of Education (DESE) implemented a new program where school districts were “not required to make up school hours that are lost or canceled due to exceptional or emergency circumstances (up to 36 hours) if the [district] implements an Alternative Methods of Instruction (AMI) Plan that is approved by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE)”. Please see the DESE website for more information.
Savannah R3 will follow their DESE approved AMI plan for the first 36 hours of instruction lost or canceled due to inclement weather. This equates to about five snow days. For the 2020-21 school year, the district has already exhausted its AMI days.
Snow Days: The current district attendance calendar has an additional 36 hours of “built-in” time. These are traditional snow days that do not require students to learn from home. Once those hours have been exhausted, the district will have to begin adding days to the end of the attendance calendar as “makeup days.”
Please note that the implementation of AMI days by DESE was not a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and is expected to continue for future academic school years.
As a reminder...
Virtual Learning or Online School: This option is only available to the students who opted into these programs. Students are not able to jump in and out of these programs once they have started.
Kindergarten through 5th-grade students who choose the virtual learning path are being taught via zoom and other platforms by grade level Savannah R3 teachers who follow the same timeline and curricular guidance as our in-person grade level teachers. When there is a district-wide snow day or AMI day, these students are included.
Middle & High School students who choose the virtual learning path are working on an independent platform called Edgenuity. These courses are not being taught by Savannah R3 teachers, and the courses are self-paced, meaning that while they do follow the district curriculum, they may not be on the same time line as our in-person students. When there is a district-wide snow day, these students will continue learning as usual.