Should School class times be changed to help traffic flow

[AlexandriaVA]

One would hope that the starting hours of school would be set to be allow children to learn. Having to add 10 minutes to your commute seems like a small price to pay to better educate our future generations.

And, of course, if our planning allowed for more compact neighborhoods where children could safely walk, bike, or take public transit to school, there would be no need to accommodate legions of parents driving their kids to school.

[Pete from Boston]

Just extend the school day to start well before and end well after the rush hours.  I don't know a lot of parents who'd complain about the extra hours of peaceful time.  Kids need a longer school day anyway.

It's a problem for two reasons:
1. Elementary (younger kids) REALLY hate having to be up at times like 5 AM, so that's why most elementary schools start smack dab during rush hour at 8 AM.
2. Children must go to school at least seven hours per day, but not too long that it becomes hard. They end it at rush hour times so that they don't explode from TMI syndrome.

It was a joke, centered on the fact that parents get their life back when kids go to school.

As mentioned upthread, the school day should be arranged primarily around what works best for learning. Many folks argue this is indeed a longer school day, but I am not an expert on the subject.

[kphoger]

I noticed that in Florida we have many parents picking up their kids now rather than them walking or biking.  I do not know if it has to do with safety more now being the sex offenders registry keeps on growing, or if its an issue with busing as some school districts have a two mile distance minimum for bus service to the kids, or something else.  Nonetheless, the mothers coming to school does clog area roadways and usually right when rush hour starts occurring.  To make matters worse, in Orange County there is no consistency as the first school bus out on the road is before 6 AM and the last one is out after 5 PM.  Therefore each different schools have different start times which results naturally in different end times, thus spreading out the school hours across the morning and afternoons.

Should the times be made more standard? Do you think that they sometimes do interfere with normal driving schedules?  Most of all do you think that no school buses should be out on the road during peak times of regular traffic?

If a school day is 7 hours long, find a period where, for an hour before school and an hour after school you can have kids going to/from school which doesn't also bump into a rush hour.  It would have to be so far removed from the normal work day (either 6am - 1pm, or 12noon to 7pm, that it would make it incredible inconvenient for both working parents and the kids.

Also, you would not want consistent hours across the board.  Just like businesses where not everyone works 9 - 5, every school starting at the same time would put a lot more traffic on the road at one time, rather than spreading it out.  And, if someone has at least 2 children in 2 schools, they would need to catch 2 school buses at about the same time, meaning there'll be MORE buses stopping on the roads during the same time period.  Or, parents will have to drop one off at one school, then another off at another school (and, of course, there could be a 3rd child at a different school).

Sorry to bring the thread back around to the actual topic (sorry if that had already been done, tl/dr). But this is perhaps the best post I've ever read by @jeffandnicole. Rearranging school hours would make things worse, not better on many levels. And I have actually spent a small amount of time helping to shuttle children to school in a town that has morning and evening schedules. Some kids went to school from about 7:00 to 12:00 or so, while others went from about 2:00 to 7:00 or so. The exact times varied slightly by school, and there were a few cases of siblings not having the same schedule. Believe me, it was practically a full-time job just dropping off and picking up kids (there were about fifteen out twenty kids total).

FWIW, I rode my bike to school from the first grade on, come rain or snow (born in 1981). From fourth grade through high school, I lived in a town that did not offer school bus service to students living in town, just those living out in the country. Kids were either dropped off or made their own way to school. My uncle (born in the 40s) grew up on the south side of Chicago, and he took public transportation to school starting in the first grade. He had to know which trolley lines to take to school, as well as s backup plan on CTA if the trolleys weren't running--in the first grade. But none of this has to do with bus schedules. School operates at times that are convenient to the most people, and bus schedules follow that; changing times would necessarily mean less convenience for most people.

[Scott5114]

School class times should reflect when kids learn best:  early start/finish for elementary, later start/finish for high school.  Unfortunately, in Seattle school buses make three runs morning and three runs afternoon, so the middle one is at a reasonable hour (start 8:30 AM) but the first one is too early (start as early as 7:30) and the last one is too late (start as late as 10:00).  Also, some high schoolers have after school jobs or take their sports very seriously and would resent shorter afternoons, so the school district has high schoolers start first, ignoring all research about teen sleep patterns.

Exactly what I was going to post. There's been tons of studies saying that teenagers should start later in the day because of the way their bodies change at that age but it's totally ignored because school administrations are too inflexible.

As for censored's weird side tangent...no, there are entirely justified reasons why someone may choose to pick up their children from school. In my case, I lived six miles from my school, and part of that was a state highway with no shoulders and a 65 mile per hour limit, so even if the distance was acceptable (it's not) biking or walking would be dangerous. So I took the bus. I was at the end of the bus route, which, because the bus stopped at every school-age child's house on every back road along that six miles, took an hour to complete. This was fine until teachers decided they wanted to start intruding on my free time, and I was able to make a case to my mom that I needed that hour back for homework.

My Dad used to take his bike out a lot when he was little and ride down the gully to Irondequoit Bay (off road).  Grandma would have had a heart attack had she known where he was going.

I'll do you one better. My parents used to ride down I-635 in Kansas before it was completed.

[Zmapper]

I agree that school should start earlier for elementary and later for secondary students.

Efficient school bus operations in urbanized areas attempt to have two, three or four tiers for schools. Each tier needs to be staggered by 25-45 minutes in order to provide the bus time to complete routes. For safety and political reasons, elementary students can't be picked up in darkness, so the earliest acceptable pickup is about 7 am.

Assuming the buses start picking up at 7 am, the first tier would be dropped off between 7:25 and 7:40, the second tier between 7:50 and 8:20, and the third tier between 8:15 and 9:00. Assuming that school buses arrive 10 to 15 minutes before the first bell, then school starts would be 7:35-7:55 for the first tier, 8:00-8:35 for the second tier, and 8:25-9:15 for the third tier.

In rural areas, bus route times are likely require 45-60 minutes between consecutive dropoffs. Starting at 7 am, dropoffs would be 7:45-8:00 for the first tier, and 8:30-9:00 for the second tier, corresponding to school start times of 7:55-8:15 and 8:40-9:15.

Assuming that long routes were paired with short routes, and with no school starting earlier than 7:45 out of concern for walking students nor later than 9:00 in order to have a reasonable end time, this means that in districts with three start times, school tiers would be at about 7:45, 8:20, and 9:00; and in districts with two start times school tiers would be at about 8:00 and 9:00.

[kkt]

Seattle Schools is a 3-tier district and discussing bell times now.  However, each tier is more like 55 minutes to an hour, so we really have one tier that's a reasonable start time and two tiers that are unreasonably early or late that students get stuck with.

By the way, in Seattle trying to avoid any dark travel would mean no travel before 9:00 AM or after 3:30 PM, meaning classes had to be between 9:45 and 2:45.  Not enough hours in the day.

[vdeane]

I'll do you one better. My parents used to ride down I-635 in Kansas before it was completed.

One of my uncles did that with I-490.  I'm pretty sure (my other) Grandma knew about that, though.