FCPS appears to be considering adding changing start time to 2026 Rezoning per Board Docs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Having a child that is new to the middle school schedule, I would like to say that it's been fine. And, it's only 2 years. Dc is already looking forward to getting to sleep in for HS

I am glad your kid think it is fine. Mine thought it was awful and grades suffered. Do we cancel each other out now?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would like to see the county take some of these mega HSs and turn them into secondary schools like Lake Braddock model.

This would naturally solve some of the boundary issues, sorry no room, you can't be bussed 45 miles across town. You'd need less buses, and the ones you have would be driving shorter distances, so can easily get from Secondary school to ES pickups/drop offs.

Everyone gets a reasonable start time. I have a middle schooler, they'd have to go to bed at 8pm to get all of the sleep they need.

3000+ capacity HSs are not good for anyone.

Why not do 2 separate schools within a school, smaller classes, but numbers would still be high enough to offer reasonable diversity of classes, accessible sport teams. Fear of big kids/mixing with younger kids, modify bells schedules, and build modify shared spaces for separate cafeterias, gyms, libraries etc.

Lake braddock was built as a secondary school.

The high schools were not

We love the larger 2500-3000 high school.

You get so much of a higher level/talented cohort for everything from sports to musicals, Orchestra and academics. The bigger talent pool means more competition, which produces a much higher quality outcome.

This is a dumb reason for bigger schools. Participation rates are more important than achieving the highest possible “quality outcome”.
What good does it do to have a high performing sports team or musical or whatever when more kids get left out?

In the case of theater specifically, most actors get cut. Dealing with rejection is 100% the best life lesson any kid interested in performing can learn.

The best thing is, if your freshman gets cut, frim the mainstage shows, they can do the smaller black box events designed for freshmen and less experienced kids. Or sign up for choir. Or sign up for the school talent show. Or stage crew.

A large school will have many, many opportunities beyond the musical where kids interested in theater can get involved.

And, the good thing about theater is that many of those freshmen who get cut, can keep auditioning, or get private voice lessons and return the next year. Many eventually get cast, if they work hard and improve.

You also might not realize this if your kid got cut as a freshman, but many of the big high schools will find a way to cast all of the seniors involved in the theater program over the years but never successfully auditioned for a mainstage show, in the ensemble in the musical their senior year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Having a child that is new to the middle school schedule, I would like to say that it's been fine. And, it's only 2 years. Dc is already looking forward to getting to sleep in for HS

I am glad your kid think it is fine. Mine thought it was awful and grades suffered. Do we cancel each other out now?

Middle school grades don't matter. Their activities don't either.

High school grades, activities and sports determine college acceptances.

Keep high school and middle school schedules where they are right now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If start times for middle school move later than 8 (possibly 830) it will decimate my department at my school. So many of them can't make the later start time work with their commute.

Middle school teachers need to organize and speak up.

Reid is hell bent on destroying the schedule for everyone to appease a tiny handful of middle school parents.

We've been trying. Middle school principals collectively said "leave the times alone" (I had one principal commute in from Aldie and another from Maryland...I can't even imagine their commutes if MS got moved to something stupid like 930-430). Teachers filled in the surveys and gave their feedback.

Even PARENT feedback VERY CLEARLY showed 8/830 was the preferred start time if it had to change. NO ONE wanted a 930 start time for middle school and yet the county started pushing that as a viable option (alongside the "just move everyone by 30 minutes" suggestion). They were going to do a trial run of that horrible late start time in...Mason District I think? And abandoned it. Never got an answer as to why.

Did you know that there are a ton of middle school busses that run half full? That doesn't happen with elementary or high school. Why can't we look at combining nearby middle and high school busses so that they can start at the same time (8/810)? I'm so over the "I don't want my 7th grade on a bus with older kids" nonsense. First of all, secondary kids do it all day every day and it's no big deal. Second of all, almost no juniors and seniors ride busses so it's really not that big of an age gap.

It could actually help with shortening bus runs if we could combine both. If a bus can pick up middle and high school at the same time, they could fill up their bus with fewer stops and shorten the commute for those kids.

Maybe it's time to suck it up and just spend the money on more busses?

I don't know what the final solution will be but they need to leave well enough alone, let the middle schoolers have two years of a 730 schedule and move on from this nonsense.

[Anonymous]

maybe if fcps didn't throw awawy 150 million in federal funding they could help middle school children sleep more

[Anonymous]

School start times should be based on the best needs of the children, not a bus schedule.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:School start times should be based on the best needs of the children, not a bus schedule.

How do you plan to do that?

[Anonymous]

I think you have all gone soft. Get the kids out of bed. It has been done for decades.

Goodness knows all this hand wringing over start times has been stupid and has caused logistical headaches of our own creation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Having a child that is new to the middle school schedule, I would like to say that it's been fine. And, it's only 2 years. Dc is already looking forward to getting to sleep in for HS

I am glad your kid think it is fine. Mine thought it was awful and grades suffered. Do we cancel each other out now?

Sounds like it. But, my elementary kid is too young to really understand the consequences of fighting sleep/ bed time, so moving my youngest kids schedule earlier would be a nightmare for anyone who has to deal with them.. moving it later would require a lot more before school care spaces.

As others have said High school matters more, so wouldn't want to mess with their sleep needs. And if middle school is only two years... it's the shortest time span for kids who are not early birds and college/ jobs don't see those grades.

[Anonymous]

And, our high schools functioned just fine and the kids got into great colleges when they had an early start time. The research may say differently, but the results speak for themselves.

[Anonymous]

One of the lowest/no cost option had the late start elementary school kids getting off buses at 5pm and not starting until like 9:40. There was all this talk about older kids not being able to watch siblings, but I think a MUCH larger group that was ignored in this calculation is the number of parents who currently flex their schedules to get kids on the bus at 8:45-9 that can still make a 9am call from home or make it into the office before 10. Shifting "just 30 minutes" makes a normal government hours workday impossible.

As someone who has taught at all 3 levels, this change also does not take into account that many teachers work at the level they do because it works with their commute/own child's school schedule. If it is changed, it will lead to massive shifts around the county and may also force some teachers to go to another county.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think you have all gone soft. Get the kids out of bed. It has been done for decades.

Goodness knows all this hand wringing over start times has been stupid and has caused logistical headaches of our own creation.

+1

I’ve had multiple kids go through middle school and they survived high school and got into college with zero trauma from the middle school start time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One of the lowest/no cost option had the late start elementary school kids getting off buses at 5pm and not starting until like 9:40. There was all this talk about older kids not being able to watch siblings, but I think a MUCH larger group that was ignored in this calculation is the number of parents who currently flex their schedules to get kids on the bus at 8:45-9 that can still make a 9am call from home or make it into the office before 10. Shifting "just 30 minutes" makes a normal government hours workday impossible.

As someone who has taught at all 3 levels, this change also does not take into account that many teachers work at the level they do because it works with their commute/own child's school schedule. If it is changed, it will lead to massive shifts around the county and may also force some teachers to go to another county.

Actually, if you look at the board docs they address this issue. In the surveys they did of parents and students they found like something around 80 percent of MS and HS kids weren’t watching younger siblings. Which suggested to me that they aren’t going to accept that argument anymore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think you have all gone soft. Get the kids out of bed. It has been done for decades.

Goodness knows all this hand wringing over start times has been stupid and has caused logistical headaches of our own creation.

+1

I’ve had multiple kids go through middle school and they survived high school and got into college with zero trauma from the middle school start time.

+another one

Just wait until these kids go to work.......or have an 8 a.m. class in college._

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One of the lowest/no cost option had the late start elementary school kids getting off buses at 5pm and not starting until like 9:40. There was all this talk about older kids not being able to watch siblings, but I think a MUCH larger group that was ignored in this calculation is the number of parents who currently flex their schedules to get kids on the bus at 8:45-9 that can still make a 9am call from home or make it into the office before 10. Shifting "just 30 minutes" makes a normal government hours workday impossible.

As someone who has taught at all 3 levels, this change also does not take into account that many teachers work at the level they do because it works with their commute/own child's school schedule. If it is changed, it will lead to massive shifts around the county and may also force some teachers to go to another county.

I teach at a late ES in FCPS. If they went with pushing things back, I would leave. I have been at my school forever. But, I live in another county and my commute already sucks at 4:30. I would have no time with my own kid. If they moved our ours earlier, I would be thrilled. The county should focus on making ALL kids get to school between the hours of 8:00-3:45pm. All kids should be done by then. But, FCPS isn’t a problem solving entity. Pretty sure a bunch of teachers could look at the data and make plans that worked.