Three Boone County School Districts Closed for Illness and Staff Shortages

Staff shortages, illness, quarantines, and increasing COVID cases all factors in switch to virtual learning.

The Valley Springs, Bergman, and Omaha School Districts have all shifted from on-site to virtual (AMI) learning for the remainder of the week.

Notifications from social media pages of each district list the reasons for the change.

The Valley Springs School district Facebook page says, “Due to staffing issues from COVID, Thursday (1-13-22) and Friday (1-14-22) will be AMI days.”

The Bergman High School Facebook page says, “Due to sickness and a staffing issue Bergman Schools will switch to AMI days,” for January 13^th and 14^th.

The Omaha School Facebook page says, “Omaha School District will be closed on Thursday (1/13) & Friday (1/14) due to a high number of students and staff that are in quarantine. Vast majority of the individuals are considered as close contacts to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19. Actual positive cases is minimal.” The post goes on the say that finding substitutes for the district has been the main difficulty.

This comes as other schools have also enacted new masking policies. North Arkansas College announced that a temporary mask mandate would take effect today. The Harrison School District has had a mask mandate since Monday and will wait to reevaluate it on January 20^th.

One other notable school closing from Searcy county is the Marshall School District which has closed all of its campuses until through Tuesday, January 18th. 

Please feel free to submit other school closings and updates by clicking here.