If you have concerns, please send email to boe@hcpss.org. I am sure you will find the new proposals are really troubling. For elementary schools kids, they probably need get up at 6:30AM/6:00AM. I know it will offend some people, but I still want to say the proposals lack common sense. Many parents (including myself) want to have a later high school time. Whenever I have a chance to meet BOE board members, I talked about a later high school start time.
OK, the thought is now: let’s flip the coin and switch elementary school and high school. Just think about little ones walking and waiting for the bus in the dark. There should be better ways to get high school later by not sacrificing our little kids.
I will need some time to analyze those earlier reports again and understand how this comes out and provide my own analysis including school bus cost. If you have good ideas, please share it here or email me at chaowu2016@gmail.com. I will put them together and send the feedback to BOE. I won’t believe the BOE will approve this new schedule in Feb. 2017.
The original document is here: 11-17-2016-school-start-and-dismissal-time-br
There is a survey conducted by the HCPSS at : School Start and Dismissal Time – Community Feedback Form https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeuJwUK0z7SUXsKEmuECBPd8AhvwEaQ9QKPyjpkrtYZ3LiESw/viewform
Public hearing will be held soon:
Little kids need more sleep. Please allow them to sleep when they can. Lack of sleep prevents normal brain development. If high school kids don’t want to go to bed early that’s their problem. The point is, whatever little kids learn in elementary school is not gonna make up for the damage from lack of sleep.
The children whose parents work full time, I think , will be mostly impacted. What a long exhaustive day it will be for those children. They will be getting up so early, leaving class time to go to aftercare at the same time that they do now. HS students do not need aftercare. For HS students, whatever happened to discipline? Some college classes or job start times are very early. HS is the time to start prepping them for what exists in the real world. What about their extra curricular activities…and sports, will this clash w other school systems? And how late will they get home based on all of the after school stuff they have to do? Just my 2 cents worth.
Thanks.
The fact that many high school students have trouble with early start time is not entirely due to discipline issues. Many studies have shown that teenage kids has a biological clock that favors later bed time and later wake up time. For example: https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/explainer-teenage-body-clock
I sympathize the concern of working parents who needs to juggle between job and childcare. In fact, for high school students it’s also a difficult choice. Late school start means less time for sports and other activities after school, especially outdoor ones in winter season. I just wanted to point out the fact to aid discussion.
I believe that the proposals originated out of the high school student parents’ dismay that their kids sleep too late to do homework. The parents want to delay the high school bell time; thus, it impacts the bell times of elementary and middle schools.