Why do some elementary schools start later?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know it will never happen in this county but I wish ES would start first instead of HS, it would benefit both age groups. My sister teaches at an ES in MA that starts at 745!

It would benefit lazy overprivileged kids. It would be a disaster for hard working high schoolers who do EC's and those who need to earn money to contribute for their families or their own college or care for siblings.

Somehow HS students manage to do this in areas with later start times. And yeah, the fact that you pin this on "lazy" kids means you are not up to speed on the current research. Bye!

For some sports like swim we have it at 3:45 so how would that work. There are not enough pools in the county. You want them to switch the es kids to the early start time! How would they get there. Many kids are in before and after school care so the start time does not matter. For us there are 7-8 classes, plus school activities plus hours of homework. If they get out at 4 that would not work.

Sports >>>> education. Always. America!

DP

Umm, actually not at all. I know it’s super trendy and edgy to bash America on this message board.

But, if it really was sports >>> education, then we would have more pools so the poor kids wouldn’t have to practice at 3:45am. We would acknowledge that we need more facilities for all sports (swimming, baseball, soccer).

I don't think it's an "America" thing either because actually, MCPS is swimming against the tide here, more and more districts are shifting to later start times for HS students and earlier for ES. I think it's more of an inertia thing, too complicated to figure out solutions to disruptions like PP outlined above (although couldn't MCPS shift some swim practices to the AM?) so it's much easier to keep the status quo.

Whether the county needs more pools (which I agree, we do!) should really be separate from this discussion, IMO.