In May the orange county school board decided by a 4-3 vote to flip the start times for middle school (6-8th grade) and high school (9-12th grade). So now middle school children will be going to school from 7:20am to 2 pm, and high school will be from 9:30 am to 4 pm.
Now can you imagine what that is going to do, 6th to 8th graders unsupervised for 2 extra hours in the afternoon? I'm not saying that all children that age are thugs or anything, but tweens/young teens left by themselves??? Not to mention that they are now going to be out on the streets in the dark to get to school in the morning.
Now the high school children will find it more difficult to work after school and get homework and chores done since they won't be getting out of school until 4pm. Not to mention all the new drivers that drive themselves, and sometimes their friends, to school are going to be dealing with the tail end of rush hour traffic, or if they opt for the 0 period class before school, they will be in the middle of rush hour traffic.
How are the after school programs for the middle school children and even the elementary school children going to be staffed and kept affordable without the use of high school students?
This is my daughters senior year. They both wanted to get jobs, but will now be limited to working on the week ends, which ends up limiting what type of jobs they can apply for.
A group of citizens decided that the superintendent position should be an elected position, instead of appointed as it is now. Now the school board has enough money to sue the office of elections to try to keep the citizens from being able to decide if that should be an elected position, as it was when I was a child, but they still need to "flip" the start times to make up for budget shortcomings. It seems to me that the "flip" will actually cost more, not just in $$$$, but safety of the children.
Now can you imagine what that is going to do, 6th to 8th graders unsupervised for 2 extra hours in the afternoon? I'm not saying that all children that age are thugs or anything, but tweens/young teens left by themselves??? Not to mention that they are now going to be out on the streets in the dark to get to school in the morning.
Now the high school children will find it more difficult to work after school and get homework and chores done since they won't be getting out of school until 4pm. Not to mention all the new drivers that drive themselves, and sometimes their friends, to school are going to be dealing with the tail end of rush hour traffic, or if they opt for the 0 period class before school, they will be in the middle of rush hour traffic.
How are the after school programs for the middle school children and even the elementary school children going to be staffed and kept affordable without the use of high school students?
This is my daughters senior year. They both wanted to get jobs, but will now be limited to working on the week ends, which ends up limiting what type of jobs they can apply for.
A group of citizens decided that the superintendent position should be an elected position, instead of appointed as it is now. Now the school board has enough money to sue the office of elections to try to keep the citizens from being able to decide if that should be an elected position, as it was when I was a child, but they still need to "flip" the start times to make up for budget shortcomings. It seems to me that the "flip" will actually cost more, not just in $$$$, but safety of the children.