New HCPSS start times:
Tier 1 high & middle schools 7:50 a.m. – 2:35 p.m.
Tier 2 middle schools 8:30 a.m. – 3:15 p.m.
Tier 2 elementary schools 8:45 a.m. – 3:15 p.m.
Tier 3 elementary schools 9:25 a.m. – 3:55 p.m.

They are only shifting the start times by 5-10 minutes to push a few more minutes between tier 1 and tier 2. It probably still won't fix the nightmare bus system they have implemented. The original plan was to change high school start times from 7:25 to 8:00 to give the teens a break. Unlike MCPS, Howard County maintains an old rural model of using many small company bus contractors to get kids to and from school. (It's been this way for a century.) HCPSS does not own buses and they don't employ the bus drivers. Since the pandemic, they had been running buses in multiple shifts to bring kids to and from school because they were so low on bus drivers. With the start time changes, there was no time between tiers to run multiple shifts so they increased the walking distances to school to free up the buses. Then they hired an incompetent contractor to revamp the bus routes and everything hit the fan. Now, they have moved high school start times to 7:50, and quietly stated that the buses will need to get the high schoolers to school by 7:30 pretty much negating the start time changes.

There are three types of irate parents:
1) Those whose kids used to ride a bus and now they have to walk. (Up to 2 miles for high schoolers, the same as MCPS.)
2) Those whose kids ride a bus and the bus doesn't show/comes at wrong time/has an extremely inexperienced driver.
3) Those whose kids were redistricted to a school they don't like and are hopping mad about it. (HCPSS redistricts frequently.)
4) Those who want the school system to adopt a far right-wing model and use these events to rope in the angry parents into their circle. Immigrant parents are vulnerable to this and suddenly you have someone yelling at a school board meeting in broken English complaining about CRT and gendered bathroom use.

I'm in MoCo and just heard from a teacher friend who explained a little bit. It sounds like they are shifting to more tiers of start times so that fewer busses are needed.
This is what MoCo already does:
HS 7:45a-2:30p
MS 8:15a-3:00p
ES1 9:00a-3:25p
ES2 9:25a-3:50p

Here's an article from today (9/13) https://www.wbaltv.com/article/howard-county-public-schools-new-start-times/45126415#
It looks like they are spreading times to split apart Tier 2 MS and Tier 2 ES.

Anyone know what’s going on? Apparently because they can’t get drivers and some routes have no buses they’re going to change the bell times.