Good
afternoon. I wanted to inform you that last night, the School Committee voted
unanimously to appropriate funding for the leasing of six additional school
buses. By doing so, the district will
now move to three tiers of transportation instead of the four tiers we
currently utilize. This allows the
district to move to a later start time at the secondary level and will combine
the CHS and GMS on the same tier.
Starting
on September 1, 2015, the district will operate with the following start times.
Tier
1- 7:50- 2:10- GMS
8:00- 2:24- CHS
Tier
2- 8:35-2:50
JFK Elementary
Hansen Elementary
Tier
3- 9:05-3:20
Luce Elementary (St.
John’s students ride on this tier as well)
In
addition, the School Committee had previously voted to start rotating the
elementary tiers starting in the 2016-17 school year. That plan is still in place and will not be
impacted by the change in start times.
While
this will be a new schedule and one that may take some time to adjust to, it
was made with the best interest of our students in mind. This topic has been studied over the last few
years by the School Committee, administrators, teachers, parents and
students. We join many districts in the
region, including Duxbury, Hingham, Sharon, Needham and Bedford, who have recently
made this change, based primarily on the wealth of information that highlights
the need for a later start time for our older students.
As
many of you know, the School Committee had identified class size and start time
at the secondary level as two of their biggest priorities in the FY16 budget
process. Through the financial support
of the community, we were able to add staffing across the district to begin
addressing those class size concerns and, with last night’s vote; we were also
able to address the issue of start time change at the high school.
Thank
you.