From Superintendent Phyllis Edwards’ note to the School Board for next week’s meeting…

Simone Elder is working on bus schedules and just the other day, we finalized the start and ending times with the high school getting a 15 minute earlier start and the elementary schools (k-3) will be starting 30 minutes earlier. We have been talking for some time now about the extension of the elementary day and this will address it by 30 minutes and make all schools the same number of hours of instruction. I am putting this change in because of the emphasis on a number of areas of concern regarding the school day e.g., recess along with trying to fit everything into the school day. These start and end times will be vetted with the City so they can make accommodations for guards. We continue to work with the City on determining the best routes to schools.

There’s already been some discussion of this on-going installation in the Free-For-All Friday comments, but here’s a bit more detail about the location of these new, city-run tornado sirens.  From the Decatur Minute…

There is a siren for each quadrant of the City. In addition to the one located on Agnes Scott’s campus, the others are located at Westchester, Oakhurst Elementary, Winnona Park Elementary, and Glennwood Academy. In the event that the National Weather Services issues a tornado warning for the Decatur area, the Decatur Police Communications Center will sound the siren for three to five minutes per issued warning. During the sounding, the siren head will rotate.

The City will conduct a test of the system at 3 p.m. on the first Wednesday of each month.