At Least One School Board Member Has Questions About Proposed Bell Schedule
Decatur Metro | May 10, 2011Garrett points out this quote from a just-posted Patch article about tonight’s Decatur School Board meeting…
[Decatur School Board member John] Ahmann said he is interested in hearing more views from the community and superintendent but wouldn’t mind seeing Fifth Avenue start times at 8:20 a.m., ending at 3:20 p.m. For Renfroe and Decatur High, he suggests 8:45 a.m.
“I’m curious as to whether or not we can use one less bus for the high school,” Ahmann said, adding that parents suggest that just 12 percent of high schoolers use the bus system. “Maybe we just need three.”
Both Valerie Wilson and board chair Marc Wisniewski provided quotes to Patch indicating their support of the Superintendent’s bell schedule for the coming year. Here’s the current proposal again for your reference…
| Decatur High | 8:00-3:00 |
| Clairemont Elementary | 8:00-2:30 |
| Glennwood Elementary | 8:00-2:30 |
| Oakhurst Elementary | 8:00-2:30 |
| Winnona Park Elementary | 8:00-2:30 |
| Fifth Avenue 4/5 Academy | 8:45-3:45 |
| Renfroe Middle | 8:45-3:45 |
I believe John Ahmann’s proposal falls right in line with Julie Rhames comments from the previous board meeting about having no school start before 8:00a. -And starting with what works for the high school and working back from there. It has the added benefit of not being a radical change from the current bell schedule.
Marc Wisniewski is quoted as saying the current proposal from Dr. Edwards is workable. I agree that Dr. Edwards’ current proposal is workable. And that it is balancing many pros and cons. The question I have, is whether or not it is putting the academic priorities first and then balancing the remaining factors?
A schedule like the one John is proposing stays closest to the current bell schedule. And would appear to require the same number of buses as we are currently using.
As a teacher so eloquently explained at the last BoE meeting, the research shows that earlier start times hurt academics and extra-curricular activities. High School students who are tired are less likely to participate in athletics and other extra-curricular activities.
If it comes down to saving $X by reducing buses or having rested and alert students… I hope our BoE members will choose the option for a later DHS start time so students will be awake in their seats and learning. Otherwise we will be undermining our ability to meet the goals we have given ourselves to increase achievement and close the gaps.
Most if not all of the cons to the later DHS start time have been met and addressed by other school districts. Here is a great paper which briefly covers the current research and describes how schools which have implemented later start times have worked around and balanced these issues: http://edr.sagepub.com/content/40/2/56.abstract
Garrett
Agree 100% with Garrett. The new schedule Edwards proposes seems workable, but I’d prefer what Ahmann proposes (5th Ave. at 8:20 and DHS at 8:45) unless there is some huge hidden downside to it I’m unaware of.
On a somewhat related note, I gotta say that (from the outside) the new 5th Ave. School looks pretty spiffy. On the linked patch article, one of the photo caption notes that “City Schools of Decatur teachers can tour the new school May 16 to May 20,” which seems a good sign that things are progressing basically on schedule.
At last week’s commission meeting, the City Manager said she believed that CSD would ask for their Certificate of Occupancy on July 15th.
School board meeting tonight at 6:30 at Westchester! Be there on time to sign up for public comment.
Also, as some people posted in a previous thread, if DHS and Renfroe were both 8:45-3:45 (or maybe one 8:40-3:40 and the other 8:45-3:45) we should be able to combine their bus routes and save money, given the low number of high schoolers who take the bus and the close proximity of the two schools.
If the 4/5 academy started a little earlier, then there wouldn’t be an issue with parents dropping their kids off at school with no supervision because breakfast would start early enough to accommodate them.
The high school students can (generally) get themselves to school and should have the later start time.
I’d like to point out that all the elementary schools Begin and End times are the same as College Heights. This is going to make it very difficult to drop-off and pick-up children at the different schools.
Yes. This is a problem with the current schedule too. One thing that helps, is that K-3 drop off times start around 30 minutes before the bell. So you can drop off at a K-3 and then head over to College Heights.
With John’s proposal a parent with multiple kids could conceivably drop off at K-3 by 7:40a, College Heights by 8:00a, 4/5 by 8:20a, and RMS and DHS by 8:45.
And that parent could conceivably be in the Decatur traffic flow from 7:30 am until 8:55 am or thereabouts and again for 90 minutes or so on the afternoon side.
There goes our Most Walkable City recognition.
Mr Ahmann and other Board members:
When considering the sequential order of school start times, nothing is solved about teenagers needing sleep if the 6-8 and/or 9-12 kids have to get up early to “catch the car to school” with the K-3 and/or 4-5 siblings. I don’t have a preference, just an interest that legitimate reasoning considering the greatest impact is used to guide the decision and not the dynamics that vary year to year, family to family.
Thank you.
Mr. Roaden attended the Oakhurst Neighborhood Association meeting last night. In his remarks he stated that he is a huge proponent of Walk and Roll to school and is personally walking each of the proposed/planned Safe Routes to School (SRTS) routes.
As an Oakhurst resident I was pleased with his position to minimize the sudden surge in vehicle traffic created by parents bringing 4/5 students to the school and his efforts to encourage walking/rolling or riding the bus.
Mr. Roaden also described planned drop-off points for driving parents on the north side whereby students start in a car and complete the trip to school walking/rolling with others on the SRTS. One drop-off point is the East Lake MARTA station and another is at Renfroe (and I assume DHS) whereby parents driving 6-8 kids can also drop-off their 4/5 child to walk/roll the remainder of the way.
I can only hope that very few 4/5 parents will drive their kids to the door of the new school, opting instead to drop-off, walk & roll or use buses even if the start time is changed to before the middle & high schools.
Footnote: When asked Mr. Roaden conveyed the proposed start times up for a vote tonight but did not express a preference in any of his comments.
Anybody have a report from the BOE meeting? I e-mailed but couldn’t attend.
Meeting was live-blogged: http://decatur.patch.com/articles/live-blogging-coverage-of-decatur-school-system-board-meeting-2
Bell schedule passed.
There was much discussion and to have the high school go later, it would cost taxpayers an additional $90K -$100K, which is what Ahmann wanted to do. Rhame suggested that we get a year of real data of who actually rides the buses and have a much deeper discussion about the benefits of later start times, and having different age groups share buses (like middle and high schoolers sharing the same buses). Marc W. agreed as did Valarie. So the vote passed 3-1 with Ahmann voting agaisnt it. So it looks like DHS will start at 8 am as planned – at least for the next year with further discussion throughout next year about this issue.
I have generally been a fan of this school board and this administration. But am I the only one who is flabbergasted that we apparently have no idea how many kids and which ones actually ride the bus to/from school? What if they tried operating the cafeterias from behind blind wals, with no idea of how many they were feeding on a given day? They’d have to cook for the maximum every day and hope there wasn’t much waste. It seems like that’s how we’ve been operating the buses. Am I totally off base?
Data and evidence are not their thing. Some of its educational culture, some of it is that educators tend to be more verbally oriented than quantitatively oriented, some of it is being a small school system without a lot of programmer, data manager, and analytic types, some of it is defensiveness about the data, and some of it is a strange non-standard way of displaying and formatting compiled information. It’s a consistent lack that pervades many of the evaluations and decisions made; however, I doubt it’s much better in surrounding school systems. And it doesn’t take away from the some of things that our educators do well. It’s very frustrating when one goes online in the 21st Century and cannot find simple information on a website but, in the end, my child is more affected by what my child’s teacher is doing inside their particular classroom.
Smalltowngal, sorry if I wasn’t very clear. They definitely know how many and who rides the buses this year. It’s next year that they don’t have the “real” data on about who’s actually going to be riding the buses. Remember, they’re openiing up a new k-3 school so they’re hoping that more kids will be walking and biking to school at the k-3 level, which may free up more buses to serve grades 4-12 as well as the pre-K. Sorry I was unclear about that.
There was much discussion about taking next year to really study this and have an in-depth discussion with the community about various issues around the new start times (like is it too late for the parents of 4/5 students to get to school at 8:45 am, do we really need all these buses if we make it easier for kids to walk to school, etc). I coulod tell Ms. Rhame really wanted to have the middle and high school routes combined so they could both start late, but the district got so much push back a few years ago from parents when they tried to combine the two. So she suggested they spend the next year getting parental input on that issue as well as the many other issues surrounding the high school schedule.
Ahmann wanted to spend $90K-$100K now on more buses, but the other board members rejected that because the budget is already so tight and they’d rather put any extra money found into the classroom. Dr. Edwards stated that they’d already had to cut $1M out of the budget for next year due to continued cuts to education funding.
While I’m not happy that my high schooler has to be at school by 8 am, he’s already getting there at 7:15 am for tutoring. Now he’ll apparently do his tutoring after school at 3pm so technically I guess he gets to sleep in a bit longer.
I wish I believed that there will be more afternoon tutoring when the morning tutoring is cut but I doubt it. Some teachers are morning folks and some are afternoon folks. Some teachers are just not going to do much afternoon tutoring if they have children to pick up, classroom work to finish, papers to grade, administrative paperwork deadlines to meet, etc.
Thanks, Sam, that all makes sense. I keep forgetting that a lot will change from this year to next, as 5th Ave opens and Glenwood is re-deployed as a K-3. And that’s precisely why I usually don’t get real invested in nuts and bolts of operations — I figure the educators and parents do better at staying on top of it. But I just have got this bus issue caught in my teeth and can’t let go. It appears they don’t know as much as they should about who and how many are riding the bus now. (And I’ve still got a bee in my bonnet running more buses to accommodate segregation by age groups.)
Sam,
John Ahmann did indeed ask about the costs of adding bus(es), but he also asked about “creative” bus schedules, like RMS and DHS sharing routes.
His final proposal was to table the bell schedule until the next meeting, especially since Ms. Seals was absent. He asked that the Admin put two proposals on the e-board web-site so that EVERYONE could review the options. He asked that costs and pros/cons be included. Nobody seconded his proposal.
Yes, you ought to be flabbergasted and you ae not at all off base.
The admin couldn’t even give a straight and consistent explanation of how much an extra bus would cost. They couldn’t explain why mileage would increase if a bus was added.
I came away with distinctly unflattering picture.
We pay some of the highest taxes in the state, and this is what we get? An administration that refuses to explore creative solutions to something as simple as a bus schedule in a 4 sq.-mile town. They repeatedly referred to “push-back” experienced some years back to sharing bus routes, as though fear of “push-back” should be a deciding factor.
Re further discussion: Hopefully this will really happen with some comprehensive polling of parents, teachers, and maybe even students using a survey instrument that includes at least some open-ended questions that elicit problems or creative suggestions that haven’t been part of the discussion yet. Everytime I would think that I had made up my mind about the best bell schedule, I would hear another angle from a parent with a problem or suggestion I hadn’t thought of yet. And I’m sure once the new bell schedule goes into effect, there will be unintended consequences, good and bad. There always are. So one has to reconsider once those unpredicted consequences happen.
Still waiting on promised calendar evaluation. Hopefully that is still in the works and goes beyond just one structured question on a general satisfaction survey.
This seems like a reasonable plan going forward–I think the earlier DHS start time is suboptimal, but it’s workable for the next year, and I’m glad to hear that they’re planning on gathering all of the information needed to revisit the issue next year and know the pluses and minuses of various options.
TOK + Karass:
There was some nice chat about gathering info, and having a real community discussion and what not. Lovely words. Best intentions.
But, I would bet you that nothing at all is actually going to be done along those lines. Unless they get a lot of parental “push-back.” That seems to be the only thing that they consider a down-side. They wanted to get this business over and done. They will NOT want to revisit.
I’m all for middle and high schoolers on buses together….. and I will have one of each next year.
Two of my kids rode the bus in middle school with high school students. It was never a problem at all. Especially considering how few high school students ride the bus.
Trust me b/c I have an 8th grader…….. the 8th graders have already thought of and often engaged in all the things that everyone is afraid that the high schoolers will bring to the table. If you have your 6th graders on the bus with 8th graders… they have already been “exposed” to the same level of questionable behavior/language that they might see from grades 9-12. In fact, I would venture to say that the 9-12th graders have the very beginnings of self control and judgment (it is a tiny sprout.. but it it there) that is completely nonexistent in 7th and 8th graders, so I’d almost rather have high schoolers on the bus with my 6th grader than 7th-8th graders.
That being said, the vast, VAST majority of our 8th graders and high schoolers are lovely kids, are not involved in destructive behavior and not at all interested in corrupting or abusing 6th graders.
MrFixit, great observation. To it I would add 9th graders (you’re not there yet?). To be cool in the eyes of elders can be filled with surprises.
It just doesn’t make sense to have the bell schedule be non-sequential. You’re more likely to have a elem and a 4/5 kid at the same time, and you’re more likely to have a middle-schooler and a high-schooler at the same time, so making the bell schedule sequential according to grade makes sense. How do I walk my K to school and get to work by 8 when my 4th grader doesn’t go to school until 8:45? It just doesn’t make sense to me.
Ahmann put forth a perfectly reasonable proposal and it was voted down. It is interesting to note that Marc, Valarie and Julie do not have the multiple-children, multiple-school problem that most of the rest of us have. Julie’s kids are a year apart so are usually at the same school.
Valarie also made much of her point that she was contacted by “lots” of parents who did not like the early start time for high school but were afraid to come to the board meeting because they might be vilified. Well, take it from me, you are often vilified for what you say at board meetings, but some of us just have to live with it because we are passionate about these issues and how they affect us and our children.
Seems like the discussion was dominated by a lot of anecdotal and emotional information. This is why systematic feedback needs to be obtained when issues have a big impact on families. Otherwise, the information is all about who is connected to who, who speaks up the most, and the subjective filter of the Board member or CSD employee that transmits the information. It feels like a high school, not a professional discussion! And yet real families with real work and family stresses are impacted.
CSD Mom, correction – my kids are two years apart. We currently have one at RMS and one at GW. They have not been in the same school since the ’06/’07 school year when they were both at Oakhurst. So yes, I understand what parents go through. Granted, I only have 2 kids, not 3 or 4 kids like some of our parents (we’re still on the man-to-man defense in our household verses the zone!), so I especially feel for them in juggling schedules. My two keep me so busy with all their extracurricular activities that I am in awe of parents with more than two kids who are just as active or more than mine. My hat goes off to them.
I’m pro John Ahmann!
Ditto that!
John Ahmann asked what the cost of adding a bus was, and I never heard them give a consistent answer. The admin backed away from one number and then kinda hedged another. You would have thought that would have been something that they had asked themselves…at the very beginning of the process.
He also asked if there was any reason to think that the peer-reviewed studies on teen sleep were anything other than valid (my words, not his). I heard not a single argument or contradiction. Dr. Edwards merely responded along the lines of “you can’t please everybody” and stated that they, the admin, would really like to “get past this” [actual quote] and move along to other things. She also stated that she had spent 3 days talking to graduating seniors.
This seemed completely extraneous. [as an aside-why would she spend 3 days talking to kids on their way OUT the door?]
She also stated that she had listened to the Board at the last meeting and had come back with a plan that met those guidelines. This was simply NOT accurate. At the April meeting, the Board requested a plan that had no school starting before 8, and the older kids starting after the younger ones. Her revised plan met the first requirement, but not the 2nd, since DHS will start at the same time as K-3. 50% is not a passing grade. John Ahmann was the only one who tried to hold the Admin to the guidelines laid down in April.
The more I read here and on Patch live blogging, the more I realize that what upsets me the most is how this was done, more than the specifics of what bell schedule resulted. One of bell schedule guidelines set by the Board in April was not followed, but only one of the Board members paid attention. The outcome of the DHS SLT meeting about start times was misrepresented. A Board member made a reasonable request to table the motion until another Board member could be present but folks want to “get past this” (as though families can get past whatever decision is made for at least the next year!). Anecdotes and complaints were used instead of a survey which could have easily been administered at the same time as the general satisfaction survey (which is still open for responses or just closed). There’s complaints about how hard it is to be a School Board member–yes! Given the weighty responsibilities and the fact that one runs for office against other good candidates–it should be hard!
This does not feel like the spirit of a charter school system when so many opportunities for collecting feedback in a systematic manner from parents, teachers, and students have been missed over the last several months. The missteps may be inadvertent but they are high schoolish and not professional.
Hmm. Now I’m starting to come to this way of thinking too. I understand the desire to get the matter out of the way and not hassle with it any longer, but it’s not a trivial decision. Was there any compelling reason not to look at the possibility of combining the DHS and RMS routes along with the cost, list the plusses and minuses of the options, get some systematic community feedback, and then vote on the options at the next BOE meeting? Would delaying things by yet another month badly jam things up somehow (and not just be annoying)?
John ahmann asked if there were any compelling reasons not to table the bell schedule until next month. There was silence, and then Dr. Edwards spoke up. I think that is when she made the comment that they wanted to “get this behind us.”
I am just happy that there is now an official bell schedule and people can work out their own household logistics.
@ Karass:
I’ve been thinking about your comment: “Data and evidence are not their thing. Some of its educational culture, some of it is that educators tend to be more verbally oriented than quantitatively oriented….”
It bothered me and I finally figured out why. There was an excellent example during the meeting of an educator who was quite comfortable with data and evidence. The head counselor at DHS, Ken Jackson, gave a presentation about their work. Among other things, he had a nice explanation of the work the dept. does to prepare kids for life after DHS, including colleges. John Ahmann had some very specific questions pertaining to financial aid, for-profit schools, and college completion rates.
Mr. Jackson managed to answer in such detail that it was evident he had a complete grasp of the problems, pitfalls, strategies, etc. And he did so with self-deprecating humor. Bonus Points!
For example, he talked about GA Perimeter as being a good fit for a motivated kid who wanted to go to GA Tech, but hadn’t been accepted on the 1st try because they automatically qualify, with a certain GPA, after 2 years. He then went on to explain that non-residential schools do have downsides for other students, but some families, for cultural reasons, expect their children to reside at home.
Not to bore you all, but it was a perfect recognition that different people face different situations, and that there are pluses and minues to most solutions.
This made a STARK contrast to the handling of the bell schedule, where information has been withheld, options have not been explored (or if they have nobody knows about it), and the only reason that we’re not employing best practices for DHS is a desire to maximize extra-curricular participation and/or work more creatively to maximize the existing buses.
On an unrelated note, it was pointed out that 99% of DHS kids passed the GA science grad test. Obviously, they are doing some things VERY WELL at DHS. I was taught in basic management that you DON”T MESS UP or tinker with something that is working well.
I couldn’t agree more with the idea of if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. Unfortunately, in my work world, there’s people who make a career out of breaking things and then getting credit for fixing them!
Mr. Jackson is great from what I’ve seen. It’s so important to acknowledge all the great things that happen in CSD because the message should not be that it’s all hopeless, no one can do anything right. Nonetheless, I think CSD missed an opportunity to demonstrate the spirit of the charter, get systematic stakeholde feedback, and involve the SLTs. The Board missed the opportuntity to consider what may have been the most appropriate bell schedule.
Once the new schedule is announced, a flurry of concerned families will be trying to figure out before-care, multiple-child transportation, and bus schedules. So CSD has another opportunity to collect information, show transparency, and demonstrate a consensus approach to developing solutions. I hope it happens. If nothing else, maybe the bus schedules could be displayed in a clear, understandable format and have content that corresponds to actual children, streets, and routes.