Ballard High Teachers Say Yes to Later Start
From one Ballard teacher (via Facebook):
Educators at Ballard HS voted today on a motion regarding moving the High School start times to a later time (switching with elementary). The vote was UNANIMOUS in support of the motion. The research, by the way, is also unanimous. Students learn better later in the morning.
Educators at Ballard HS voted today on a motion regarding moving the High School start times to a later time (switching with elementary). The vote was UNANIMOUS in support of the motion. The research, by the way, is also unanimous. Students learn better later in the morning.
Comments
Option B
– 6:10 school day*, K-8 Tier 1 to Tier 2 and Pinehurst/JAK-8 use
JAMS/Eckstein attendance areas and TOPS to include Washington,
Beacon/Kimball attendance service area , $3.2 Million savings (one
year), same on time service
From what I can decipher, this $3.2M "savings" for Option B is relative to this year's transportation costs, so Option B would actually cost $200K more than what has been previously proposed, though it is unclear to me if the additional costs are from the grandfathering of transportation for JA K-8, Pinehurst, and TOPS students, or from switching tiers for K-8 schools from tier 1 to tier 2.
I'm very sad that there were no options presented that would align the bell times for JAMS and Nathan Hale. Also, I am concerned that they might be planning to swap unsuspecting elementary schools from Tier 2 to Tier 1, to accommodate the K-8 tier swap.
Did anyone attend the work session? Does anyone know which of the options were recommended to go forward?
-JAMS-bound
TS
http://www.seattleschools.org/modules/groups/homepagefiles/cms/1583136/File/Departmental%20Content/school%20board/13-14%20agendas/013014agenda/20140130_Presentation_Budget.pdf
Transportation options are on slides 16 and 17.
6:10 is the instructional time of the school day (6 hours, 10 min). I think the instructional time for elementary is supposed to be 6:10 and for middle and high schools it is 6:30.
- JAMS-bound
Another thing to note: Hale pushed its start time back to 8:30am, "But had to give up yellow bus service to do it." [bold added] Are families willing to give up district transportation to both middle and high schools in order to make this work? That seems to be the only way to maintain reasonable start/end times for elementary students, while not increasing costs.
Some may remember a time when we had more of a two-tier bus schedule with middle/high schools starting around 8 and elementary around 9. It worked, didn't it? Flipping times or shifting times 10 min later isn't as easy with a three-tier schedule.
What about the elementary students? Being on that 3rd tier is already pretty lousy. We've been there.
-observer