MCPS School Hours

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:High school should not start before 8 am.
Follow the science, people!

College classes start at 8 am. How do you expect high schoolers to be preppy for that if they’ve never had to do that before?

Tell them not to sign up for 8 am classes.

[Anonymous]

What OP? It's not about practices. It's about the buses.
If MCPS had unlimited money and buses everyone would be starting at the same time like many private schools.

They reuse the buses and bus drivers for multiple routes so one bus driver might drive elementary, middle and high schools on one day. There was a movement to move HS to the late start date and elementary to early but some people were worried about getting elementary school kids to the bus in the dark.

My siblings have kids in smaller school districts with little traffic between schools and all levels of school start at around 8:20.

[Anonymous]

here was a movement to move HS to the late start time*

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:High school should not start before 8 am.
Follow the science, people!

College classes start at 8 am. How do you expect high schoolers to be preppy for that if they’ve never had to do that before?

Tell them not to sign up for 8 am classes.

Right. Because that’s always an option. You people are unserious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:High school should not start before 8 am.
Follow the science, people!

College classes start at 8 am. How do you expect high schoolers to be preppy for that if they’ve never had to do that before?

Tell them not to sign up for 8 am classes.

Right. Because that’s always an option. You people are unserious.

I can't think of a single 8 am class I had over my 4 years in college. Earliest was 9 AM both semesters of freshman year for distribution requirements at the 101 level. Anything higher was later in the day. There were plenty of late classes though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This has been discussed to death and it's never going to change. Put your thoughts to other things, people.

People always say things will never change and you should give up. That is a bad message for kids. Things can and do change when enough voices are heard. MCPS will eventually catch up with other school districts that have initiated later start times due to the importance of teenagers getting more sleep. Many many school districts have gone to later high school times and it has worked out well for them.

How did it work out for Howard County?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:High school should not start before 8 am.
Follow the science, people!

College classes start at 8 am. How do you expect high schoolers to be preppy for that if they’ve never had to do that before?

Tell them not to sign up for 8 am classes.

Right. Because that’s always an option. You people are unserious.

I can't think of a single 8 am class I had over my 4 years in college. Earliest was 9 AM both semesters of freshman year for distribution requirements at the 101 level. Anything higher was later in the day. There were plenty of late classes though.

Lucky for you. I didn’t have that option as some of my required classes had filled up and the only available sections were 8 am ones. Or it was a class that didn’t offer many selections and the early start time worked best for the professor.

[Anonymous]

I would really encourage everyone to read the bell times report from a few years back. If you seriously want to engage with this issue, you need to know what's been done already, and the barriers identified in that survey to any sort of "swap" between elementary and high school start times.

[Anonymous]

The main issue is the busses. If I were in charge, I would only provide bus service for special Ed and ES and for secondary students who live more than a one mile walk to a Ride-On bus (which students ride for free anyway). This would end the excuse that we don’t have enough buses to have our schools all start at 9:30.

Bring back HS Plus and use it to run school from 3-7 PM for students who are struggling with class before 9 AM.

In addition, juniors and seniors need more online options. That would allow those who need or wish to have 3/4 or 1/2 day in person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:High school should not start before 8 am.
Follow the science, people!

College classes start at 8 am. How do you expect high schoolers to be preppy for that if they’ve never had to do that before?

Tell them not to sign up for 8 am classes.

Right. Because that’s always an option. You people are unserious.

No, you're just stuck in 1960. I work in higher ed. It basically is ALWAYS an option. If it isn't, the kid will figure it out and make it work. They don't need four years of "prepping" to potentially wake up for a class that might not ever happen for them. You are an "unserious" person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What OP? It's not about practices. It's about the buses.
If MCPS had unlimited money and buses everyone would be starting at the same time like many private schools.

They reuse the buses and bus drivers for multiple routes so one bus driver might drive elementary, middle and high schools on one day. There was a movement to move HS to the late start date and elementary to early but some people were worried about getting elementary school kids to the bus in the dark.

My siblings have kids in smaller school districts with little traffic between schools and all levels of school start at around 8:20.

Lack of buses and parking for them ounds like a relatively straightforward budgetary allocation issue to solve. What's taking so long?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is the same white liberal quackery that tries to reinvent things no one needs or asked them to.

White liberals screamed for year-round school and touted all kinds of supposed benefits and pointed to data on how much learning loss happens. So MCPS introduced the innovative school year calendar and now the staff at Roscoe Nix are crying to the BOE every month about how awful it is, how their families hate it and how they’re dying to go back to the traditional school year calendar.

White liberal fantasies rarely stand up to reality.

Science denialism strikes again!
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25156998/

"the evidence strongly implicates earlier school start times (ie, before 8:30 am) as a key modifiable contributor to insufficient sleep, as well as circadian rhythm disruption, in this population. Furthermore, a substantial body of research has now demonstrated that delaying school start times is an effective countermeasure to chronic sleep loss and has a wide range of potential benefits to students with regard to physical and mental health, safety, and academic achievement."

The same data points were pulled out about learning loss due to summers in favor of the innovative school year calendars. But those data points don’t seem to matter as staff, students and parents hate year-round school and are demanding to revert to the traditional school calendar.

You are advocating for a pushed back start time of 30-45 minutes. I promise you that teenagers will find a a way to eat that time up as they will adjust their bed times later.

You have to stop living in fantasyland.

Furthermore, when I was in MCPS, our start time was 7:15. So we’ve already given these kids 30 minutes back by starting HS at 7:45. And now you’re saying it’s still not enough. You’ll never be satisfied and you’ll never hold yourself accountable for the obvious negative trade offs that come with your idealized fantasy of kids starting HS at 9 am.

And you walked uphill both ways in the snow. I get it. Your personal experience and opinion are more important than peer reviewed science. AKA science denialism.

You can find a study to prove your wishes on any topic. If your kids cannot get up for hs, homeschool or look at other options.

And, mcps has a two mike rule for hs so sone kids are walking uphill in snow.

Find us a peer-reviewed study showing it's better for adolescents to get up earlier.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What OP? It's not about practices. It's about the buses.
If MCPS had unlimited money and buses everyone would be starting at the same time like many private schools.

They reuse the buses and bus drivers for multiple routes so one bus driver might drive elementary, middle and high schools on one day. There was a movement to move HS to the late start date and elementary to early but some people were worried about getting elementary school kids to the bus in the dark.

My siblings have kids in smaller school districts with little traffic between schools and all levels of school start at around 8:20.

Lack of buses and parking for them ounds like a relatively straightforward budgetary allocation issue to solve. What's taking so long?

Elrich tried to get more revenue for schools, but the Council shot it down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:High school should not start before 8 am.
Follow the science, people!

College classes start at 8 am. How do you expect high schoolers to be preppy for that if they’ve never had to do that before?

Tell them not to sign up for 8 am classes.

Right. Because that’s always an option. You people are unserious.

No, you're just stuck in 1960. I work in higher ed. It basically is ALWAYS an option. If it isn't, the kid will figure it out and make it work. They don't need four years of "prepping" to potentially wake up for a class that might not ever happen for them. You are an "unserious" person.

So why can they "figure it out" in college when they 18, but not when they're in high school when they're 18? Make it make sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:High school should not start before 8 am.
Follow the science, people!

College classes start at 8 am. How do you expect high schoolers to be preppy for that if they’ve never had to do that before?

Tell them not to sign up for 8 am classes.

Right. Because that’s always an option. You people are unserious.

No, you're just stuck in 1960. I work in higher ed. It basically is ALWAYS an option. If it isn't, the kid will figure it out and make it work. They don't need four years of "prepping" to potentially wake up for a class that might not ever happen for them. You are an "unserious" person.

This was 2001. UMD. Nice try tho.