Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It concerns me that they sent an advance email before posting the schedule....like a warning for us to brace ourselves for big changes.

The changes for elementaries, announced this week, range from five minutes' to fifteen minutes' difference from this year's start or ending times, as far as I can see. Not sure if you consider those big changes. I don't.

The process for changing these times was open to the public, and FCPS notified parents on its web site, by e-mails, on school web sites, etc. of public meetings about start time changes. Those meetings gave information about how much start times would change in ES, MS and HS under each potential option. Though the meetings did not list specific schools (nothing like "Sally Jones Elementary will begin at 8:10 a.m."), they did mention a range of times -- such as, under option one, ES start times would be five to 10 minutes earlier, or under another option, start times would be the same, etc. The options were on their web site for a long time for parents to see, though you could not have looked up your one specific school until this week. But a change in the range of five to 15 minutes should not come as a surprise to anyone.

Our ES is starting 25 min. later, and dismissing 40 minutes later- it is a substantial change (and a very long day for the Kindergarteners).

Old Creek? Call the school as it just doesn't seem right if you start at 8:30 you should end at 3:15 not 3:25. Every elementary is suppose to have 6:45 hours of "instructional" time this year. maybe a printed mistake?? I hope.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And what improvements have we seen as the result of all of these changes? Anyone? I'm seeing NO IMPROVEMENT in my child's education. He comes home more tired than ever, looking forward to weekends and days off. Dreads coming home to an hour of homework every night before he can do what he wants to do. 7 hours in school, an hour of homework and around 30 minutes getting to and from school. Now we have longer school days and they want to make the school year longer too? For what? What benefit are we seeing? None here!

Why does it take a half hour for your son to get to school?

My middle schooler's bus ride is nearly 40 minutes with traffic.

NP here. Sorry, you missed the point. The second poster is trying to bait the first into saying that her son goes to an AAP center, which usually involves long bus rides. Then this thread can devolve into AAP hating.

My child's bus ride to our neighborhood school a mile from our house is 30 minutes. It's the traffic and we are one of the first pickups.

It's the traffic. Honestly, the right around half an hour bus ride doesn't seem too bad at least for us. By middle school my kids are thankfully able to strategically pick out homework that can be done on the bus, thus reducing the workload that is left to handle at home.

We were lucky the elementary commute was a bit shorter, because longer transit times definitely were harder when the kids were younger plus they still needed more assistance with homework and were less able to use the time productively. Maybe PP's son could save any homework that's only reading to do during the ride to school? Depending on what his homework is like currently that may reduce the hour per evening to a more manageable level.

Given the growth around here, at a certain point it's just impossible and impracticable to schedule starting and ending times to avoid the traffic. The area's growing like gangbusters, and it's only going to get worse. I know as I've struggled with seeing our charming neighborhood school turned into a monolith. But at a certain point you've got to either accept the changes and longer commute times, or move. It really becomes a lifestyle decision at a certain point. There is only so much FCPS can do.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It concerns me that they sent an advance email before posting the schedule....like a warning for us to brace ourselves for big changes.

The changes for elementaries, announced this week, range from five minutes' to fifteen minutes' difference from this year's start or ending times, as far as I can see. Not sure if you consider those big changes. I don't.

The process for changing these times was open to the public, and FCPS notified parents on its web site, by e-mails, on school web sites, etc. of public meetings about start time changes. Those meetings gave information about how much start times would change in ES, MS and HS under each potential option. Though the meetings did not list specific schools (nothing like "Sally Jones Elementary will begin at 8:10 a.m."), they did mention a range of times -- such as, under option one, ES start times would be five to 10 minutes earlier, or under another option, start times would be the same, etc. The options were on their web site for a long time for parents to see, though you could not have looked up your one specific school until this week. But a change in the range of five to 15 minutes should not come as a surprise to anyone.

Our ES is starting 25 min. later, and dismissing 40 minutes later- it is a substantial change (and a very long day for the Kindergarteners).

Yes, but most of them are adjusting 5 to 10 minutes. Somehow I think the kindergartners will survive. Nearly a half hour at the end of the day seems to be packing up anyhow.

What's strikes me is that we're hearing very little on these boards from people making the biggest changes -- the high schoolers and middle schoolers. I suspect that's in part because parents are more seasoned with the school system -- they also realize having had kids in MS and perhaps HS as well as ES, that it's not all about them and their kids. Honestly, the people whining about 5 and 10 minute changes at their elementary schools when some middle schoolers will have to be on the bus by 6:30, need to chill and perhaps develop a little resilience if they're going to keep their kids in the public school system. There are a lot of different needs to be met here.

Anonymous wrote:These bell schedule changes are incredibly frustrating. The schedule at my child's school has been the same for several years at least. We've never needed morning SACC and never considered it. Thanks to the bell schedule change it is going to be a problem for my DH to put my child on the bus and get to work on time (I leave early to get home early).

I just called about morning SACC - the waiting list is over a year long. I'm not sure what I'm going to do...morning care is almost impossible to find.

We might need to shell out major $$$ and get an au pair when, frankly, we really don't need one - my kids are only in afterschool SACC about 3-4 hours a week. In the morning I need someone for about 20 minutes. Argh...

Forget about the Bell times call your school and ask when the START time is. You want to know when your child has to be in their seat before marked as Tardy. It could be 10 min difference that what you think an that could make a difference for you to be able to drop off. Also you won't know until August what time the bus will pick up. I've known people to drop/wait with kids at different stops on their same routes just because the bus gets to 1 stop earlier than theirs.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And what improvements have we seen as the result of all of these changes? Anyone? I'm seeing NO IMPROVEMENT in my child's education. He comes home more tired than ever, looking forward to weekends and days off. Dreads coming home to an hour of homework every night before he can do what he wants to do. 7 hours in school, an hour of homework and around 30 minutes getting to and from school. Now we have longer school days and they want to make the school year longer too? For what? What benefit are we seeing? None here!

Why does it take a half hour for your son to get to school?

My middle schooler's bus ride is nearly 40 minutes with traffic.

NP here. Sorry, you missed the point. The second poster is trying to bait the first into saying that her son goes to an AAP center, which usually involves long bus rides. Then this thread can devolve into AAP hating.

My child's bus ride to our neighborhood school a mile from our house is 30 minutes. It's the traffic and we are one of the first pickups.

It's the traffic. Honestly, the right around half an hour bus ride doesn't seem too bad at least for us. By middle school my kids are thankfully able to strategically pick out homework that can be done on the bus, thus reducing the workload that is left to handle at home.

We were lucky the elementary commute was a bit shorter, because longer transit times definitely were harder when the kids were younger plus they still needed more assistance with homework and were less able to use the time productively. Maybe PP's son could save any homework that's only reading to do during the ride to school? Depending on what his homework is like currently that may reduce the hour per evening to a more manageable level.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It concerns me that they sent an advance email before posting the schedule....like a warning for us to brace ourselves for big changes.

The changes for elementaries, announced this week, range from five minutes' to fifteen minutes' difference from this year's start or ending times, as far as I can see. Not sure if you consider those big changes. I don't.

The process for changing these times was open to the public, and FCPS notified parents on its web site, by e-mails, on school web sites, etc. of public meetings about start time changes. Those meetings gave information about how much start times would change in ES, MS and HS under each potential option. Though the meetings did not list specific schools (nothing like "Sally Jones Elementary will begin at 8:10 a.m."), they did mention a range of times -- such as, under option one, ES start times would be five to 10 minutes earlier, or under another option, start times would be the same, etc. The options were on their web site for a long time for parents to see, though you could not have looked up your one specific school until this week. But a change in the range of five to 15 minutes should not come as a surprise to anyone.

Our ES is starting 25 min. later, and dismissing 40 minutes later- it is a substantial change (and a very long day for the Kindergarteners).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It concerns me that they sent an advance email before posting the schedule....like a warning for us to brace ourselves for big changes.

The changes for elementaries, announced this week, range from five minutes' to fifteen minutes' difference from this year's start or ending times, as far as I can see. Not sure if you consider those big changes. I don't.

The process for changing these times was open to the public, and FCPS notified parents on its web site, by e-mails, on school web sites, etc. of public meetings about start time changes. Those meetings gave information about how much start times would change in ES, MS and HS under each potential option. Though the meetings did not list specific schools (nothing like "Sally Jones Elementary will begin at 8:10 a.m."), they did mention a range of times -- such as, under option one, ES start times would be five to 10 minutes earlier, or under another option, start times would be the same, etc. The options were on their web site for a long time for parents to see, though you could not have looked up your one specific school until this week. But a change in the range of five to 15 minutes should not come as a surprise to anyone.

Hm. I missed all that somehow. I read the emails but I thought the changes were not to affect elementary schools at all. Despite our start and end time BOTH changing next year, our principal sent out an email stating that our bell times would be the same. If I had a chance to voice my opinions before these changes, I would have voiced my opinion. I would have said no.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Middle Schoolers got shafted. Poor kids.

No high schoolers did! Poor kids that like sports and other extracurricular. You will all be thrilled when you need a teachers conference or you child needs extra help. Ooooh can't wait to see those posts. You get what you asked for!!!

Right now, with its very early HS start times, Fairfax County is very much in the minority in the U.S.

Nearly 54 percent of all U.S. public high schools already have start times between 8 and 9 a.m. Another 33 percent have start times between 7:30 and 8 a.m.

Less than 10 percent of all U.S. high schools have start times before 7:30. FCPS is now in that 10 percent.
You can see the stats yourself: http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/SASS/tables/sass1112_201381_s1n.asp

So, most public high schools have start times later than our current ones. And they have for years. Yet somehow they manage to have sports and extracurriculars and teachers' conferences and the world has not ended either. It won't end here on the first day of school next fall.

It was consistent and it did have structure. Every Monday was the same

We all know how disruptive these snow days are. However, half day Mondays were disruptive, too. Try scheduling the specials, etc. Try scheduling your curriculum around it when you are a teacher.

Anonymous wrote:And how they said they would have money to fund it from the county but they did not.

This is a huge problem that many are not understanding or caring about. They were not able to fund this. And we have an even bigger shortfall this upcoming year.

I personally liked the half day Mondays. That gave my child the chance to recharge a little, keep a consistent schedule (relatively speaking compared to this year), and if we needed it we could do dr. appts. and so forth w/o taking her out of school. Plus, sometimes I would sneak home early. Some of us actually like to be with our kids (I say that half in jest). I also don't like how this was pushed through so quickly as if it were pre-ordained.)

I think FCPS has it's priorities screwed up. None of these schools should be starting before 8 a.m. PERIOD. I went to a strict parochial school growing up and even we didn't start until 8:00. Heck, there are adults in my office whose regular schedule does not start until 10:00 a.m. Transportation should be figured out to make that happen. Even if it costs more, you can take from other places (and we will all disagree with what those are).

I can appreciate that Garza is a decisive woman. Unfortunately, her actual decisions are not popular with a lot of people. Me included.

Anonymous wrote:It concerns me that they sent an advance email before posting the schedule....like a warning for us to brace ourselves for big changes.

The changes for elementaries, announced this week, range from five minutes' to fifteen minutes' difference from this year's start or ending times, as far as I can see. Not sure if you consider those big changes. I don't.

The process for changing these times was open to the public, and FCPS notified parents on its web site, by e-mails, on school web sites, etc. of public meetings about start time changes. Those meetings gave information about how much start times would change in ES, MS and HS under each potential option. Though the meetings did not list specific schools (nothing like "Sally Jones Elementary will begin at 8:10 a.m."), they did mention a range of times -- such as, under option one, ES start times would be five to 10 minutes earlier, or under another option, start times would be the same, etc. The options were on their web site for a long time for parents to see, though you could not have looked up your one specific school until this week. But a change in the range of five to 15 minutes should not come as a surprise to anyone.

Anonymous wrote:It was consistent and it did have structure. Every Monday was the same. Now we have random days off scattered throughout the year. And the kids are not learning more because of full day Mondays. They've added remedial time at the end of each day which appears to be time for most kids to do whatever they want. They've counted 10 minutes of arrival time as instructional time. And they've introduced the worst foreign language experience. I've not heard a single kid who enjoys it at our school.

It boggles my mind how people on this board cannot understand that others may think differently about things. Some wanted full day Mondays. Others did not.

+1000

Would love for FCPS to go back to the old schedule that worked well for this county for 30+ years.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It was consistent and it did have structure. Every Monday was the same. Now we have random days off scattered throughout the year. And the kids are not learning more because of full day Mondays. They've added remedial time at the end of each day which appears to be time for most kids to do whatever they want. They've counted 10 minutes of arrival time as instructional time. And they've introduced the worst foreign language experience. I've not heard a single kid who enjoys it at our school.

It boggles my mind how people on this board cannot understand that others may think differently about things. Some wanted full day Mondays. Others did not.

+100.

And now that we have had one full week of school since December (I think that's right). we're now heading into the dead zone of SOL prep. Last year my son's class stopped with almost all new material in favor of review starting in APRIL!

I agree with PP. I'll admit that when we first moved here, I hated the idea of half-day Mondays, even though I was fortunate enough to work from home. But it wasn't too long into living here that I began to appreciate the time it gave kids to recharge and get into their week. One season of sports, particularly once travel teams started, and you see how quickly weekend down time disappears....

Also, when you have older kids, your realize that switching to full-day Monday and adding all these random teacher work days actually takes instructional time away from them. I'd be surprised if my high schooler has had a full week since December -- I know even last week, he was away from school two weeks doing reskedded state sports championships (postponed twice because of school cancellations). By the time yet another random teacher work day rolled around this Monday, we were done.

The funny thing was that our HS used this Monday for touching bases. So I got to go in and listen to teachers complain about how all the days off had affected their ability to teach and kids' abilities to focus. I did not think it was possible for new leadership to come in and so thoroughly trash a school system. I'm all for decisiveness, but we need to peddle back and ask how we have gotten all these days off (and I include 2 weeks at Christmas when they know we're going to lose multiple days in January and February to snow). How did these things ever pass into policy to begin with?

Anonymous wrote:It was consistent and it did have structure. Every Monday was the same. Now we have random days off scattered throughout the year. And the kids are not learning more because of full day Mondays. They've added remedial time at the end of each day which appears to be time for most kids to do whatever they want. They've counted 10 minutes of arrival time as instructional time. And they've introduced the worst foreign language experience. I've not heard a single kid who enjoys it at our school.

It boggles my mind how people on this board cannot understand that others may think differently about things. Some wanted full day Mondays. Others did not.

+100.

And now that we have had one full week of school since December (I think that's right). we're now heading into the dead zone of SOL prep. Last year my son's class stopped with almost all new material in favor of review starting in APRIL!

Anonymous wrote:

Some of us like to spend time with our children while they are young.

You can't find an additional 2.5 hours some other time? You are willing to give up consistency and structure in the school for 2.5 hours?

No to mention you have all the extra teacher workdays for quality time! Lucky you!!