In our district, high/middle school starting at 8:30 means pre-K-4 starts at 7:30, due to the busing, and the little kids would be out by 2 — the day/aftercare situation would be a bit of a nightmare. It's doable, but it's disruptive.
Every educator in Maine knows about the research. There aren't any evil supers or school boards who think to themselves, "we know highschoolers work better later, but screw them! Har!"
Rather, people are looking at hour-long bus runs, no drivers available, sports schedules, extra-curricular schedules, daycare issues, staffing issues, etc., and doing the best they can to balance all the scales.
Maybe 8:30 works for your district! Great! But to make this a statewide law seems to run counter to everything we've ever said about local control of our school systems. To act like you just care more about high schoolers than those dastardly education professionals and school boards is a bit over the top, in my opinion.
Are the underpinnings of our schedule rooted in capitalism and what's best for the economy? Absolutely. But that doesn't mean there aren't good reasons for the decisions that local school boards have made. Unless you're also going to wholesale change the rest of society, maybe let's not make this a law.
How about provide some incentives for districts looking to do it?
MDLTG t1_jcg2nch wrote
Reply to Do you think Maine should mandate later start times for high schools? by benpinette
In our district, high/middle school starting at 8:30 means pre-K-4 starts at 7:30, due to the busing, and the little kids would be out by 2 — the day/aftercare situation would be a bit of a nightmare. It's doable, but it's disruptive.
Every educator in Maine knows about the research. There aren't any evil supers or school boards who think to themselves, "we know highschoolers work better later, but screw them! Har!"
Rather, people are looking at hour-long bus runs, no drivers available, sports schedules, extra-curricular schedules, daycare issues, staffing issues, etc., and doing the best they can to balance all the scales.
Maybe 8:30 works for your district! Great! But to make this a statewide law seems to run counter to everything we've ever said about local control of our school systems. To act like you just care more about high schoolers than those dastardly education professionals and school boards is a bit over the top, in my opinion.
Are the underpinnings of our schedule rooted in capitalism and what's best for the economy? Absolutely. But that doesn't mean there aren't good reasons for the decisions that local school boards have made. Unless you're also going to wholesale change the rest of society, maybe let's not make this a law.
How about provide some incentives for districts looking to do it?