Reply to Elementary parents, pay attention to start times

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The poster who suggested middle and high share busses...totally agree.  Frost and Woodson used to do this.  I don't know why it's not being considered again to help alleviate the ES concerns (FTR, I'm for keeping the status quo).

The poster who suggested shortening the day by 15 minutes...totally agree.  If you push back the ES starts by 30 minutes, taking off 15 minutes at the end of the day makes it an easier pill to swallow.  Part of the problem here is the long day length in FCPS (which is why we are able to have so many built in snow "days.")

I wrote to the school board with reasons why a 9/930 start for middle school was absolutely ridiculous and included both talking points above.  They're making no attempt to creatively solve the problem and, instead, just trying to figure out who they'll shove in that last, least desirable, time slot.

I do know a ton of elementary parents, however, who like the late start so 30 minutes hardly seems like a big deal.  But maybe if they find a way to free up some busses (did you know middle school busses are run half empty on average?) they could take those 950 start ES schools and move them up to 920 and have all of them start at the same time.  It's the staggered elementary starts that require so many busses that are the problem.  If they could all fit in one time slot, there wouldn't be much of an issue.  They start at 8, MS at 830, HS at 9.

But to ask middle school to shift by two hours while everyone else barely moves is absurd.  You want to talk about a mass exodus?  There are a TON of middle school teachers who, quite literally, cannot make that new schedule work.  A 30 minute change at every level is fairly easily accommodated.  A two hour change at the middle school level is not.[/quote]

If this is truly about middle school slerp, then a 30 minute change will have zero impact.

The only options that will actually affect middle school sleep schedules is putting middle school last and elementary first.

If the justification for disrupting everyone else is middle schoolers needing more sleep, then the resulting schedule needs to actually give them more sleep time.

The only way to achieve this goal is giving middle schoolers the latest start.

30 minutes later makes zero impact on their sleep.[/quote]

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