I am glad John Ahman has requested that the bell schedule be brought back onto the agenda. I have rising 3rd and 5th graders and am very unhappy about the decision that was made.

I second everything Mr. Ahman brought up in his email (as reported by Decatur Metro) in making that request. Please consider scenarios where this late start time will encourage the creation of 4th or 5th grade latchkey children. He or she could now be responsible for getting themselves to school without oversight of the single parent in the household who had to go to work at 7:30 – 8:00. The DFACS guidelines say, based on maturity, a child between the ages of 9 – 12 can be left home alone for brief periods of time. Surely this isn’t what the board intended. Which children will start to slip through the cracks? This can also be the case for two-parent families with multiple kids, depending on their schedules. Or, perhaps the parent will put the kid on the bus, which might not have been necessary without this drastic change. And isn’t that what we’re trying to discourage?

Abruptly changing the start time for my fifth grader’s school by almost an hour is a major scheduling change. Bus transportation is not the only concern to be addressed in regards to this topic.

I am also very upset by the way this was handled and the process for informing affected parents. I did not learn about this until the week after school reading Glennwood’s last newsletter. However the board handles publicizing important decisions, this proposed action should have been backed up by notifying affected parents. I see that high school parents were sent a letter about that proposed change. Was this done for rising fourth and fifth graders, who seem to have the most drastic change?

Why wasn’t this action tabled for further consideration? Why the rush to vote? Why doesn’t the CSD website list this as a hot topic?

The bicycle plan I had developed for my kids next year will not work, since the start times are so different. Guess I better check those bus routes…

I hope the school board will put this back on the agenda and give the decision the time and thoughtful consideration it deserves, before households are turned upside down with a rapid and dramatic schedule change.