Reply to What Confederacy of Imbiciles Is Working To Prevent A Later Start Time For MCPS High Schools?

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Reply to "What Confederacy of Imbiciles Is Working To Prevent A Later Start Time For MCPS High Schools?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]So who's going to pay for all the new busses and drivers to make sure these start times are convenient for you?[/quote]

The last report showed the cost at 2-3M per annum. The 2022 operating budget is 2.71B.

That's 0.10%
[/quote]

THIS. Mental health experts agree that sleep deprivation may be the single leading cause of the rise is adolescent depression, anxiety, and suicide. This is obviously not solely a matter of bell times. There are a number of reasons sleep has deterioriated in recent years, among them the college rat race encouraging excessive course loads and extracurricular activities, digital device use leading to poor sleep hygiene, and digital device use leading to inefficient study habits.

That being said, we are now at a point where inadequate sleep is actually a matter of life and death. Bell times need to be adjusted. The expenses listed above are a pittance when considered against the value of human lives. That's only the beginning, though. The district and individual school leadership and PTAs need to be far more aggressive about educating parents on this issue and finding ways to promote sleep above and beyond the bell schedules.

As for the argument that this is about older kids needing to take care of younger kids, it doesn't really hold water. If you have high schoolers starting at 0 dark thirty and elementary school students starting at 930... who's taking care of the little kids BEFORE school? You have to deal with this problem on one side or the other, if you're going to recycling buses--either the big kids start earlier and can't take care of little kids in the morning, or the gap is in the afternoon. I would like to see some actual numbers as to how many families this applies to and whether they actually care which end of the day they're getting jammed on. Both options suck, ime.

Finally, the argument about school jobs is pretty bogus too. I wish more kids had afterschool jobs but the data shows this group is vanishingly small. In the end of the day this comes down to the district saving money on buses so that they can overstaff the central office with PhDs, buy lost of Promethean boards, develop ill-fated curricula, and more. Oh, and sports. It's about sports, and if I have to choose between mental health and sports, there's no contest.

Express buses and greater use of public transportation seem like promising possibilities. But the bottom line is that this is a really serious issue, and I dont care [/quote]

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