School start and end times in the Bellingham School District are changing for the 2011-12 school year, with elementary students starting earlier, middle school students starting later, and high school students having a choice.
The new start and end times of school for the 2011-12 school year are:
High school: 7:45 a.m. to 2:15 p.m., with an option for students to attend from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Students would be responsible for their own transportation on the later schedule.
Elementary school: 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., except for Wednesdays, when dismissal will be 1:15 p.m.
Middle school: 9:15 a.m. to 3:45 p.m.
Before making the decision, Superintendent Greg Baker put the plan out to the community, asking for input and suggestions on how to improve school schedules while staying within budget and transportation constraints. Comments varied, with some people pleased by the new schedules and others worried about how it will affect their work schedules and student lives.
“It’s a better solution that our status quo which isn’t working,” Baker said Friday morning, March 18. “After looking at all the different aspects of it and getting as many different opinions and points of view and looking at it from different angles, this proposal does the best job of meeting the concerns.”
The district needs to keep the school levels starting at different times because there isn’t money to purchase enough buses to eliminate one start time. About 45 minutes is needed between the different school schedules to accommodate the bus runs.
The weekly early release at the elementary level was developed in an effort to keep budget costs down while slightly increasing the length of the school day. By contract, elementary teachers receive 225 minutes of planning time each week. During the school day, students would have 160 minutes each week with PE, music and library specialists, giving classroom teachers some of their planning time. To make up the other 65 minutes without having to hire additional specialists for pull-out time, students would be dismissed early once a week. Teachers would use part of the afternoon time for planning and the other time would be used for school-wide meetings and professional development.
Baker admits middle school students end up having the least-desirable schedule, with most people across the district wanting the 8:30 a.m. start time.
“It’s an overwhelming step in the right direction to try to improve a number of things,” Baker said, “but it’s not perfect.”
This is the second time in two years that school schedules have been changed. For the 2010-11 school year, elementary school schedules changed to have all students start at 9:30 a.m. and end at 3:30 p.m. The reasoning behind the change was to eliminate the need for mid-day bus runs for younger grades and to create equitable planning time for all elementary teachers, regardless of grade.
Baker and other district officials wanted to change the schools schedule after hearing a lot of negative feedback from elementary school families about the later start time. Some high school students, families and staff have long asked for a later start time, saying 7:45 is too early for many teenagers.
Baker said he and other district officials will continue to work on the schedules, in hopes of developing ones that work for everyone and doesn’t require one group of students to be stuck with an undesirable time.
“Theoretically… if we’re able to get everyone on one start time, or two, even though it would be disruptive to do it again, if it’s better… we heard from the community to do it,” Baker said about schedules potentially changing again in the future.
Baker hopes community groups and school PTAs work to create before-school activities for middle schoolers and after-school activities for elementary schoolers on Wednesdays. He’s already been approached by some people wanting to do arts enrichment, and the YMCA is discussing having a Wednesday Adventures Camp program for elementary students.
“I encourage people to think creatively about what kind of opportunities this opens,” he said.
I, for one, think that the 8:30 start time for elementary students is crazy! I think that is way too early for little ones to have to be up and at school. I think that if they switced the elementary and middle school schedules it would be alot better. Ideally it would be nice if elementary and middle schools could start at the same time. I also love how the school district made it seem like the public had any input into the schedules, I have had many teachers tell me that the decision was made and the info passed on to them before the community meetings were even held.
Julie-
Your suggestion to flip the elementary and middle school schedules is essentially what the current schedule is; middle school is currently 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. and elementary is 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. (with some students not getting picked-up until 3:45 p.m. due to the bus runs). Many elementary families have expressed frustration this year with having school start “too late” at 9:30 a.m., which is partly why district officials started looking at ways to make that time earlier. The suggested times, which were first proposed about two weeks ago, were created based on input received from a community survey done in January.
Having schools start at the same time is something the superintendent has said he wants to do, but the district doesn’t own enough buses to make it happen right now.
And please note that I’m not defending or criticizing the changes or how the district made the decision; I just wanted to provide even more background information to the discussion.
-Kira Cox
Education reporter
This new schedule makes much more sense. Studies show that the young kids are much more ready to learn because hey’re rarin’ to go first thing in the morning and are tuckered out by early afternoon. Meanwhile, adolescents need much more sleep and are hopelessly tired at those crack-of-dawn hours.
Now that I’m in Phoenix (moved from Ferndale) i prefer the 8:45-3:30 school. They were going from 7:30-3 at a school in Chandler, and now that was early!
I’m a bit more frustrated w/ the district changing start & stop times every year.
It is easy to criticize when I don’t have to deal w/ the big picture of running a school district w/ increasingly shrinking budgets. They are doing what they can with the resources given. Sounds like they took community input into consideration. There is no way they can please all the people all the time. I for one am grateful for our teachers & administrators.
I wonder if we will still have all those teacher workshop Mondays off & half days given the early release every Wednesday?
HeeHee…I started attending school at Harmony Grade School in the 1st grade in 1940. The bus arrived at my home on the Mt. Baker Hwy at 7:30 am. School ended at 4:00 pm. The bus arrived at home at 4:30 pm in time for the 2nd milking of the cows. I was taught phonics and could read real books by the end of 1st grade. (I can see your rolled eyes, sorry.) I am so forever grateful for those wonderful teachers at Harmony. Great art and music classes, big auditorium and stage, musical instruments available. Those were the days.
I for one am happy for the change in times for the Elemetary kids. However, what I want is clarification of why they need a half day EVERY week for planning? What was wrong with the way it was LAST year? I sure would like someone to come in and change my schedule so that I could have a half day every week to plan my work load. Just sayin’.
It would be nice if all schools started near the same time, but they are not co-located. I have only seen that work in communities where the schools are all close to each other.
I think part of the 1/2 day isn’t just about planning. It has to do with “required hours”. They have to be in school XX number of minutes. If they did 5 full days..with that long of a day, they would be going over the hours..and I think that would mean not funded. If someone knows more about how the funding works, I think it is based on hours and not days. I may be wrong, but that is what someone explained to me it is days/minutes thing.
What I am wondering about is afterschool activities..for middle school and high school…if the high school student opts for late start…are practices, clubs, etc that usually meet right after school..going to after the early time or the later time?
Stephanie-
According to the school district, the reasoning behind the weekly early release days was to keep budget costs down while offering more PE, music and library time.
This is from the post:
“By contract, elementary teachers receive 225 minutes of planning time each week. During the school day, students would have 160 minutes each week with PE, music and library specialists, giving classroom teachers some of their planning time. To make up the other 65 minutes without having to hire additional specialists for pull-out time, students would be dismissed early once a week. Teachers would use part of the afternoon time for planning and the other time would be used for school-wide meetings and professional development.”
Basically, PE and music teachers give classroom teachers their daily planning time. If the district were to give the classroom teachers ALL their planning time during the “school day,” it requires the district to hire more PE and music teachers so that students could be pulled out of their regular class more often. District officials decided they didn’t want to do that with the current budget conditions, but they still needed to meet teacher planning time requirements.
The length of the student day on Wednesdays will be longer than it is on current early release days.
There will likely still be some other early release days, at least partially because of parent-teacher conferences, but how many and when they will be has not been determined.
I hope that clarifies the weekly early release decision.
-Kira Cox
Education reporter
The only problem I see with swapping the elemntary/middle is it will now create a child care crisis for some of us. I liked the fact that my daughter was able to watch my son for an hour before I got home from work. Now with the middle school students getting out at 3:45 a lot of us are going to be scrambling for childcare, especially on Wednesdays…..
I think it really doesn’t matter…it is going to impossible to meet everyone’s desired hours.
Personally for us this is going to work better. With the current schedule I have to to have before and after school care. Now with this start time, I will be able to drop them off on my way to work. I will only need after school care…until my husband can pick them up, as I work til 6pm and he is off at 4:30pm.
The Wed..thing…I might talk to my boss and see what I can work out. I work 4 -10′s, My off day is Monday, but I might be able to swap that for Wed.
We have never had issues with working with childcare and finding childcare, honestly I think that is part of being parents in two income household, childcare is part of that responsibility. I do not think it is the schools job to be the babysitter…unfortunately I have ran across a few people who think, schools should provide FREE after school care programs. It just kinda bugs me. I would love it if schools could offer programs, I would be willing to pay for it.
My kids go to Geneva and they go to the Firs Before/After care program.
Reason number 815 why we sent ours to private schools.
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