PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A new schedule of start times for Philadelphia schools is being met with frustration and confusion among parents.
The School District of Philadelphia said the new fall schedule posted Thursday night is designed to address a bus driver shortage by consolidating 28 different school start times down to three: 7:30 a.m., 8:15 a.m. and 9 a.m.
The new bell schedule is available online.
Superintendent William Hite told the school board the new start times would allow buses to run several routes each.
"We simply do not have the personnel to operate at pre-pandemic levels without significantly increasing ride times for students," Hite said. "We are trying to organize it this year so that it is getting schools within 30 minutes of their current schedule. So, hopefully it will not be as disruptive."
At Thursday night’s meeting, school board member Mallory Fix Lopez told Hite that it was confusing that the new schedule had more than three start times.
"I heard you tonight talk about 7:30, 8:15 and 9:00 — but I’ve seen 8:30s, 8:50s, several 8:45s," she said.
Hite replied that some schools had asked for it. "That’s us trying to be responsive to schools who are saying, 'Is there an opportunity for us to be within 15 minutes of one of those tiered times?'"
Most high schools would start at 7:30 a.m., which runs counter to research saying older students perform better with a later start. Fix Lopez noted that the new schedule would mean that many high school students would be unable to drop off their younger siblings at school.
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Parent Dare Henry-Moss told the board the schedule was assembled without enough community input. "Parents don’t want this. Teachers don’t want this. There’s been no transparency. And it’s certainly not best for students."
Henry-Moss said it would be a challenge to drop off her kindergarten and second-grade children for a 9 a.m. start, when she has to be at work at that time.
"It's difficult to see the decision to move any elementary schools to a 9 a.m. start time as anything but hostile to working mothers," she said.
Arthur Roth, a 7-year-old student at Kearney Elementary School, told the board that the previous start times were fine with him.
"I hear you saying kids coming to testify are cute," Roth said. "Well, you know what’s not cute? Watching my parents worry about how they’re going to have jobs they can’t get to because you ruined it."
The district plans to gather feedback with an eye toward revising start times again for the 2022-23 school year.