Notable Quotes from the AJC Article on CSD Start Times
Decatur Metro | April 14, 2011 | 9:48 amAs has been pointed out in the comments to a previous post, the AJC put together a piece on the Decatur School Board’s “rejection” of earlier school start times. A couple notable blurbs…
Board member Julie Rhame said she had made up her mind hours before the meeting even started.
“Every study I’ve ever seen shows that teenagers both go to bed later and sleep longer,” said Rhame, who voted with board member John Ahmann against the proposal. “I feel anything before 8 o’clock is too early.”
And then this from Superintendent Edwards…
Edwards estimates as many as 80 percent of the system’s students use one of the 14 school buses that cover Decatur’s 4 square miles. The system has done away with a “hub” system, eliminating the need for children to transfer from bus to bus. The parents of younger students also don’t want their children riding with older kids.
“Given all these considerations, I can’t see how start times can be the same for everybody,” Edwards said. “Somebody’s going to have to start early.”
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So are we 15 minutes away (so to speak) from a solution? Amazing how hard it is schedule busing in a 4 square mile town.
I remain mystified by the determination of Dr. E. to push up start times. [“Somebody’s going to have to start early.”]
I reread the principal’s post, written BEFORE the BoE pushed back.
[Y’all NEED to read the whole thing http://decaturhighprincipal.blogspot.com/ ]
How do earlier start times benefit the athletics program???? Those kids are going to be pretty tired by the time they get to practice, if they’ve caught the bus at 6:30am. Wonder if that will decrease their athletic performance along with the academic???
The principal’s letter states that they intend to have “tutorial” 30 minutes at the end of the day, when NO practices can be held. So basically, your practices can start a grand total of 15 whole minutes earlier. [“We expect attendance to rise since students are already in the building and are not rushing off to an athletic practice.”] And your student/athletes will be getting home 15 minutes earlier. That oughta make a big difference…NOT.
So, could this be a defacto way of extending the school day???? Without, you know, calling it that? Would that explain the concerted effort to ram this through?
Re your comment on athletic performance declining as a result of early start times. There is actually research showing that this is the case. With early school start times, participation rate for sports teams and athletic performance of those that do participate declines. I don’t have the cite now, but will look it up.
What will kids on sports teams do during this “tutorial time” if they are not being tutored. Do they go to study hall? Do they hang out outside the school building or in the halls? They don’t have time to go home, so what do they do?
A Very Good Question…
Dunno what they’d do during that 30 minute lag, but I bet they wouldn’t be ALLOWED to remain in the building unless they were in a classroom/tutorial.
At RMS the kids are shoo’ed off the grounds, so they can’t hang around.
Two things: First, the connection between a later school start time and afterschool participation is ambiguous, and likely irrelevant, since there are so few districts in the country that are as compact and dense as Decatur. Participation lags because of transportation distances, generally, and that is just not a problem. Secondly, student athletes getting home earlier is an absolutely preposterous justification for a decision that research tells us will negatively affect every student. Moreover, if our athletes are having to leave school early to compete on a regular basis, why aren’t we just asking for later start times? Just because the home team gets out at 3 seems like a pretty poor reason to demand the opponents get there at 3:30.
How about this idea – keep the current start times but give student athletes Phys Ed credits for participating in after school sports (freeing up 1 period), and let them schedule study hall for last period of the day
Do none of the high school teams practice or have weight training before school these days? We did, went to school and performed just fine.
Adjust and adapt.
You missed my favorite quote from Dr. E, “up to 80% of students ride the bus”
How did she come up with this number? I would be surprised if 40% of students rode the bus
The quantities of coffee our kids consume should make this early start easy. We all got to school early in the 80s to do all sorts of clubs and weight lifting. And we didn’t have Starbucks. Get over it! I hope none of these kids get stuck with 7am classes in college. Or maybe their parents will call and complain for them like they’re doing now.
Well said!
7 AM classes in college? Hmmm, I don’t remember much of that even in courses with science labs. I considered before 10 AM to be a hardship. I guess life in college has gotten tougher…
What were the hours of the schools pre-2003 re-org? Did any of them start before 8a?
Not Westchester!
It started at 8 AM or 8:15 AM, I think, and Ms. Kuebler was standing right out on the curb to shoo kids in and she knew every single one by name, even during the first week of school, so they hated to be late. She started morning assembly right on time, including the weekly word root or prefix, suffix. There were two buses–Red Bus and Blue Bus–and the rest of the kids walked/biked or were dropped off.
Consider:
1. In Dr. Edwards’ letter of March 7, she cited the “stress of trying to fit mandatory subjects into a school day along with 30 minutes of Spanish, art, music or physical education, and recently an outcry from parents for a daily recess” NO TIME has been added to any school’s schedule.
2. In Ms. McKain’s letter of April 12, she indicated that the change in start/end times would “help our large population of athletes get home earlier after practice”. She also states: “We plan to have a time after school for tutorial, meaning no practices will start before that time.” So, will athletic practices really start any earlier?
3. If 80% of CSD’s 2900 students ride the bus and 12% of high schoolers ride the bus (as cited in the 2010-2011 yearbook), that means approximately 104% of remaining students ride the bus.
I think CSD was counting something other than true bus ridership when they were quoted as saying “as many as 80%”, e.g. transportation slips. Either that or they’ve gone and changed math facts on us! No wonder the poor kids struggle with math…
It could be transportation forms. Strangely, I got a letter with an attached transportation form for my youngest last week and we can see his school from our house. Didn’t get one yet for our rising 5th avenue student who will need to ride the bus.
I would say that maybe 80% of kids at 5 th avenue next year may be bus riders.
Agg I hate that our city working hard on being “green” has 14 buses for 4.2 square miles, and 80% riding the bus. We should do better than that!