Facing a bus driver shortage, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education recently brainstormed solutions to get students to school on time. One possibility was moving elementary school start times forward. But some parents were opposed to this change, and the school board decided against it.
Chief Operations Officer André Stewart first introduced the idea to the board during a February 14 meeting,” Stewart said. “He said on average, buses to high schools are thirty minutes late when a route is unassigned. Elementary and middle school buses are sixty minutes late.
“At the high school level, this would cause a student to miss two complete days of school,” Stewart said. “At the middle school level it would be three and the elementary school level would be a whole day of school.”
Stewart added this calendar year, there were only two days where buses were fully covered.
To combat the bus driver shortage and help students get to school on time, Stewart gave three recommendations for consideration — one of them being changing elementary school start times. Seven elementary schools would start at 7:30 A.M. and four elementary schools would start at 7:50 A.M.
“Our middle schools would be pushed back by five minutes and our high schools would be pushed back by ten minutes,” Stewart said.
One of the three recommendations was approved at that meeting: an increase in bus driver pay to $20 per hour, making CHCCS bus drivers the highest paid in the Triangle area.
The other recommendation was creating magnet school service changes.
The proposal for elementary school start times was continued to the Board of Education work session on March 2. At that time, parents and teachers expressed concerns about the potential of elementary schools starting earlier.
Molly Biek, a teacher and parent of a student at Northside Elementary School, said her son wanted to attend the meeting to speak on how difficult the change would be for himself and his classmates.
“Unfortunately, we already start so early that he has a hard time in the mornings as is, and couldn’t be here to do that,” Biek said.
As a teacher, Biek said one of the main losses of instructional time is when students are late to school, but believes moving the school’s schedule back would only increase that loss of time.
“In my room, students who find it most difficult to get to school on time are not bus riders, and I don’t mean this year and in this crisis,” Biek said. “The students who are being dropped off in the mornings are the ones who are late. The students with parents who live outside the district are the ones who are tired.”
Sally Johnson is a fourth-grade teacher at McDougle Elementary. She said she, and other staff members, feel the effects of the bus driver shortage on a daily basis.
“Moving schools to earlier start times runs the risk of creating competition amongst staff to work at schools that start later,” Johnson said. “Many staff may seek jobs in other districts with later start times. Earlier start times would make finding early morning childcare impossible for many staff members. Students and teachers would be even more exhausted than they currently are.”
Ultimately, CHCCS district leadership decided there will be no changes to bell schedules or magnet program transportation in the next academic year. School board members approved a recommendation for “combined levels” for some routes in the upcoming school year, meaning some elementary school students could ride the bus with middle school students, and some middle school students could ride the bus with high school students.
Photo via Matherly Collins/The Daily Tar Heel.
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