Anonymous wrote:700+ signatures. Signed by students, caretakers AND Pediatricians!!! We can do this, MCPS!
A petition doesn't do much good if there's no way to do what's being asked.
Did you read the entire thread? Ideas, that may or may not have been proposed in the last study of bell times, are here. What solutions can you bring before you shut it down with a "no way"?
None of the ideas posed in this thread are legitimate, practical, implementable solutions. They're half-baked, impractical fantasies.
Anonymous wrote:700+ signatures. Signed by students, caretakers AND Pediatricians!!! We can do this, MCPS!
A petition doesn't do much good if there's no way to do what's being asked.
Did you read the entire thread? Ideas, that may or may not have been proposed in the last study of bell times, are here. What solutions can you bring before you shut it down with a "no way"?
Yes, I have. And no one has articulated a coherent solution. "Just flip ES and HS" ignores a variety of problems. "Use public transit" isn't a solution on its own, particularly when the poster refuses to explain how.
Anonymous wrote:Later? My kid's school doesn't start until nearly 9:30!
If we're going to push back high school, we need more buses to at least avoid needing to do two runs for elementary schools.
They should switch ES and secondary school so ES is early
How would after-school activities work for high school kids then?
Many other states have later start times. It has been a non issue. DCPS schools start at 9 am, even high schools. Students at DCPS School without Walls HS don’t even have athletic fields. They finish school at 3.30 pm and then commute, sometimes across the city, for sports practice and then commute all the way home. And we are freaking out about after school activities getting messed up if school lets out at 3 pm instead of 2.30 pm? Trust me it is not impossible and will be better for the kids. Change is possible and not something to be scared of
They switched the start times where I live, and it's NOT a non-issue. Moving elementary school earlier has hard on many families, and it has resulted in cuts to (already limited) school buses. It might be worth it anyway, given the benefit to older kids, but it's definitely not a costless tradeoff.
Anonymous wrote:Later? My kid's school doesn't start until nearly 9:30!
If we're going to push back high school, we need more buses to at least avoid needing to do two runs for elementary schools.
They should switch ES and secondary school so ES is early
How would after-school activities work for high school kids then?
Many other states have later start times. It has been a non issue. DCPS schools start at 9 am, even high schools. Students at DCPS School without Walls HS don’t even have athletic fields. They finish school at 3.30 pm and then commute, sometimes across the city, for sports practice and then commute all the way home. And we are freaking out about after school activities getting messed up if school lets out at 3 pm instead of 2.30 pm? Trust me it is not impossible and will be better for the kids. Change is possible and not something to be scared of
They switched the start times where I live, and it's NOT a non-issue. Moving elementary school earlier has hard on many families, and it has resulted in cuts to (already limited) school buses. It might be worth it anyway, given the benefit to older kids, but it's definitely not a costless tradeoff.
And this is the thing that advocates of pushing later start times REFUSE to acknowledge and address.
Anonymous wrote:To those refusing to TRY to think of another schedule - everything has a tradeoff.
Or, maybe it's that we've had this debate already and beat this dead horse and unless there's a new idea that hasn't been put forth before, we recognize it's a waste of time?
Anonymous wrote:To those refusing to TRY to think of another schedule - everything has a tradeoff.
This. There is no perfect solution that anyone of us can come up with in 5 minutes of thinking about it. MCPS has people who can be assigned to work on the best options. Even starting HS at 8.15 am instead of 7.45 am would be a big positive step
Anonymous wrote:So many decisions are made based on free transportation. Snow days, flooded roads, start times, end times. It’s ridiculous. We need to do away with school buses, boost the public buses and make decisions based on what’s best for our kids.
You want elementary school kids to get on RideOn buses alone?
Even if you limited it to HS, RideOn routes could never scale up to meet the demand before and after school.
In plenty of cities ES kids get in the bus. At the very least MS/HS kids get on the bus and train.
I have a hard time imagining my 6-year-old getting on a city bus. Actually no, I know exactly what would happen.
Regardless, let's say, as you seem to suggest, we keep buses for ES, and have MS/HS ride non-school public transportation.
How would that work? RideOn only carries 57,000 riders per day. MCPS reports 100,000 students ride the bus, typically twice per day. That's an extra 200,000 rides.
Now, obviously not all of those are middle/high school students, but you're still looking at increasing rides per day by 3-4x.
Worse, those rides obviously aren't spread throughout the day or throughout the system. Most of the riders would be going to a handful of places. But they'd need to get picked up from wider range of bus stops than currently exist. So many, many more buses would be needed. For only on some routes that pass schools, and only for a couple hours each day.
In an area of higher density housing, workplaces, and transit, this could be workable. You would expect a higher percentage of walkers. And higher-capacity rail service carrying some of the burden. But this wouldn't work in a place like MoCo.
I don't think you're familiar with how RideOn and Metrobus work in Montgomery County. You go to a bus stop, you get on the bus, you take the bus until you get to your stop, then you get off. And many of the routes have different frequencies, depending on time of day.
I don't think you understand the massive increase in resources that would be necessary to accommodate potentially 200,000 more rides each day. And high schools and middle schools aren't transit hubs in the current county bus routes.
And what about the wide swaths of the county that aren't anywhere near a bus stop?
You make this statement like increasing ridership and transit routes/capabilities should not be a key priority for a county that wants to grow and keeps building dense housing. For that matter a county that has Sustainability goals.
Except adults wouldn't be going to the same place as kids, so those new buses would take awfully circuitous routes.
Why? Most of the high schools, right now, are served by existing routes. Kids could take existing buses, on existing routes, to and from school. Which kids are actually currently doing, right now. Even middle-school kids.
You can't be serious. Do you have idea how many school buses serve each high school compared to the number of RideOn buses that stop near the high school within 30 minutes of start time?
Do you think buses are magical vehicles with unlimited capacity? And what about all the kids that to those schools that don't happen to be served by the bus route that goes to the school? You think there's enough capacity at transfer points and routes?
You're either trolling or you haven't thought this through. I'm not sure which.
If you think high school start times should be later (which maybe you don't, who knows), then you have to provide solutions for how kids will get to and from school without expanding school bus transportation.
Existing public transportation is one of those solutions. Not the only solution. Not the solution that will work for everyone everywhere in the county. Not the solution that would allow MCPS to say: starting next year, all schools start at 8 am, and we expect everyone to take RideOn/Metrobus/Metrorail to school!!!! But ONE OF THOSE SOLUTIONS. Why are you disagreeing with this? It's ALREADY one of the transportation solutions for MCPS kids, but here you are saying no no no no unpossible no.
In fact, MCPS should be doing it already, regardless of school start times.. It makes no sense to expend more public funds on a separate, parallel school bus transportation system, in places where the public bus transportation can serve the purpose. It's wasteful of MCPS money and Montgomery County money, and it's also bad for the environment.
You're the one pushing for a later start time, but you haven't proposed a plan to accommodate it. As you suggest, public transit could play a role in that, you haven't even acknowledged the challenges there, much less proposed plausible solutions to them?
Do you live inside beltway? Density and school locations would make it very hard to meaningfully integrate school and county bus operations. A very large number of kids need to get to specific places at specific times. And while the times line up similarly to when adults need to begin their commutes, they're going to different locations than where the kids are going. So for coverage, capacity, and routing reasons, you'd need a lot more buses and routes. Only many of those would only be needed at specific times of the day. And that what the school bus service already does.
As it happens, I am actually not pushing for later start times. I am merely saying that public transportation would help the goal of later start times, for people who have that goal. I am also not advocating for the complete abolition of school bus transportation.
Why you are so invested in arguing that public transportation would not help? Obviously it wouldn't work for everybody, and yes, some changes might be required, but nobody is saying that it would work for everybody and that no changes of any sort would be required.
So, if we still need the existing school bus system, and school bus system logistics prevent changing times, how would we use the county buses? And what benefit would be gained?
You refuse to actually describe what you want to see.
Some kids would take public transportation, other kids would continue to take school buses, and the benefit would be that MCPS would need fewer school buses and fewer school bus drivers and/or could use those school buses/school bus drivers for other routes.
I will note that RideOn is the Montgomery County bus system, but Montgomery County is also served by Metrobus, which is the WMATA bus system.
Where do you live, that you never see kids getting off or on RideOn or Metrobus buses at school?
As you said, some are already doing that. I haven't seen very much of it, but I have no doubt that's true.
So what are you proposing that would be different enough today to allow changes to school schedules? Even somehow dropping a 1 out of the 4 bus runs would double RideOn's daily ridership numbers.
Anonymous wrote:700+ signatures. Signed by students, caretakers AND Pediatricians!!! We can do this, MCPS!
A petition doesn't do much good if there's no way to do what's being asked.
Did you read the entire thread? Ideas, that may or may not have been proposed in the last study of bell times, are here. What solutions can you bring before you shut it down with a "no way"?
None of the ideas posed in this thread are legitimate, practical, implementable solutions. They're half-baked, impractical fantasies.
The same thread gets resurrected every couple of months by the same old kooks. They are unable to see the big picture.
Anonymous wrote:700+ signatures. Signed by students, caretakers AND Pediatricians!!! We can do this, MCPS!
A petition doesn't do much good if there's no way to do what's being asked.
Did you read the entire thread? Ideas, that may or may not have been proposed in the last study of bell times, are here. What solutions can you bring before you shut it down with a "no way"?
None of the ideas posed in this thread are legitimate, practical, implementable solutions. They're half-baked, impractical fantasies.
The same thread gets resurrected every couple of months by the same old kooks. They are unable to see the big picture.
The way you’re throwing around “kooks” and “nut jobs,” you seem very triggered. If this subject touches a nerve, maybe you should avoid these threads.
Anonymous wrote:To those refusing to TRY to think of another schedule - everything has a tradeoff.
This. There is no perfect solution that anyone of us can come up with in 5 minutes of thinking about it. MCPS has people who can be assigned to work on the best options. Even starting HS at 8.15 am instead of 7.45 am would be a big positive step
Just set your clocks forward by 30 minutes and you get a later start time. Problem solved!
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