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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]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. [b]The county should focus on making ALL kids get to school between the hours of 8:00-3:45pm[/b]. 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.[/quote]

Are you willing to give up your pay increase to fund buying all the busses and hiring all the drivers this would require? That is, if we can find the bus drivers. We don't have the buses or staff to handle this, that is part of the reason why we are in this position.

My MS has always been an early riser. We were surprised that his summer wake up time shifted from 7:30 to 8 this year. He is in bed reading by 9, lights out at 9:30, and asleep most nights by 10. That gets him between 7-8 hours of sleep and he seems fine with that. His soccer practice and Scout meetings mean that he knows that he has to get homework done before his evening activity. He has a snack before soccer and dinner when he gets home, we have it ready for him when he gets back from practice. Dinner is before Scout meetings. He can choose to miss the Scout meeting if he is feeling tired but has rarely done that.

He has friends who are night owls and don't appreciate the morning wake up time but they have adjusted. Their grades are good, at least to hear their parents talk, and the kids seem happy when I see them in the evening. I think most of them appreciate being home by 3 and having a good amount of down time before they have anything in the evening.

Would they all prefer a later start time? Yes. Are they suffering with the earlier start time? No. A few will tell you that they are and a small percentage of those kids probably are. Most are fine.

I don't have a kid in ES and I think the idea of pushing ES start time back 30 minutes to get 30 more minutes of sleep for MS kids is crazy. I wouldn't have a problem with an earlier start time for ES, my kid was an early riser so it would have fit him just fine, and we had flexible work times so we could handle the shift and have someone at home. But there are two many ES in FCPS so you would need a 7:30 and 8am start time and I don't think you could then get the busses for the HS and MS kids.

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I agree.

The only option that remotely makes sense is flipping the elementary and middle school schedules.

But then, you will lose all the middle school teachers who want the early schedule.

Why is fcps poking the hornets nest every single day?[/quote]

The county can't handle the surge in child care needs if they start sending home elementary aged kids at 2:30.  Dh leaves the house at 5:30 and is barely home to meet a 4 pm bus.  [/quote]

My guess is this is exactly what they're going to do and is why they're piloting their new "beyond the bell" program that has some exemptions from the county that are probably for ratios and what not. They pilot this now to work out any bugs and make people confident it works and then expand it to all elementary schools for next year so they can supervise the huge volume of kids who will need after school care. [/quote]

You really think they’ll have elementary schoolers getting on buses at 7 AM? That just seems crazy given that it’s still dark out in the winter at that time. With the way my kids are spaced out, our household would be dealing with the early start time for four years in a row if they leave things as is. If they flip elementary to the early start, we would deal with it for three years. But I would be so pissed if I had a kid who was only in like first grade or younger right now and looking at six or seven years of that early start. [/quote]

Don’t they start that early in Loudoun? It always seemed crazy to me too. I have 2 in ES (4th and K) and I’m not looking forward to the early MS schedule especially for bus riders, but it’s only two years. It’s 4 full years of the 7:20-2:30 bell schedule at the HS in the city where I grew up, and MS is even earlier - 7:05-2:15. [/quote]

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