Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do we really need to move MS start times? It's 2 years for most FCPS kids and it's much longer for every teacher impacted by this change. Why are we trying to fix something that isn't truly broken????

I agree that it's not necessary to move MS start times later if it means messing up the elementary and high school schedules. But, MS start times are not ideal. I bet there are a LOT of absences that wouldn't occur if school started even an hour later.

I think, though, that the ideal of matching middle school hours to the high school hours (8-3) is just not feasible. And in that case, just leave them.

They COULD move MS start times to match HS but it would be a significant transportation expense with needing to hire more bus drivers and buy more busses.

I wonder if they could move some MS hours to more or less match HS if the Middle and HS are physically quite near each other and bus routes could be combined. I’m thinking South County, Key/Lewis, Irving/WS, Poe/Annandale or any others that are quite physically close. I grew up with shared middle and HS bus routes and it was fine.