Survey available for Bibb parents regarding bell times

After weeks of analyzing the options, Bibb County parents have the opportunity to help choose the bell schedule for public schools.

A survey on the Bibb County school district website shows the three options that Superintendent Curtis Jones presented for the 2016-17 school year at public forums last week. He said at Thursday’s session at Ballard-Hudson Middle School that, in addition to the feedback from the 140 or so parents that attended the three forums, the district has received more than 2,000 emails about the proposed schedules.

“A lot of those, we have thought about, considered and have used that to come up with these solutions,” Jones said.

The three new proposals all have one group starting at 7:25 a.m., another at 8:15 a.m. and another at 9:05 a.m. to create the desired 50-minute gap to make sure students arrive on time. All three have the same gap at the end of the day, with finish times of about 2:30, 3:20 and 4:10 p.m.

The order of the three age groups has caused perhaps the greatest consternation among parents. In two of the three options, the elementary school students would start the latest, with a school day running from 9:05 a.m. to 4:10 p.m., and they would have the middle schedule in the third option, attending from 8:15 a.m. to 3:20 p.m.

One reason for that was to keep the younger children from waiting for buses at the earliest hours, sometimes in the dark.

“We’re not comfortable with having our youngest cargo going first in the dark,” said Keith Simmons, the district’s chief of staff.

Parent LeAnn Gunter Johns pointed out that with a ride of about 45 minutes for some students, those same young children would be getting off the bus between 4:45 and 5 p.m. if they were in class until 4:10. In the winter months, it will be dusk by that time, and the roads also start to get busy with people getting off work or picking up children from school activities.

“So you have young children getting off at the bus stop when our roads are the craziest,” she said at Thursday’s forum.

In two of the three options, the high school students would have the earliest time slot, from 7:25 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Some parents expressed concerns that such a schedule goes against recent sleep studies by the Centers for Disease Control and American Academy for Pediatrics, which suggest that adolescents and teens should start their day a little later due to natural sleep cycles shifting later.

District officials pointed to a study by Hanover Research, which analyzed those and other studies.

“The research indicates it’s all inconclusive,” Simmons said, noting that it was Hanover’s conclusion that the studies didn’t account for students’ willingness to follow “best practices” when it came to rest.

Another factor for older students, Simmons said, was families with teenagers who needed to go to work to help pay bills. That wasn’t the case for Matesa Burnett, a bus driver for Bibb County schools with four children and one stepchild in the system, but she did prefer an earlier start time for her older children.

She said having her elementary-aged child getting off the bus after the older kids allowed for built-in child care that wouldn’t be there if the elementary schools had the earliest slots.

“I have my elder kids that can get home before my elementary kid gets home,” she said.

The need for a new bus schedule with three tiers arises from a shortage of bus drivers, district officials said. In the first year of his tenure as superintendent, Jones said he and transportation director Anthony Jackson have tried to hire more drivers and even plan to raise drivers’ salaries.

But other districts with higher pay for drivers, like Houston County, have as many or more vacancies.

“We’re looking for a resource that is not present,” Simmons said.

Jones said that if he is able to get enough drivers to make a different bell schedule work, like the current two-tiered system, he would re-evaluate at that point.

As it is, students at Ballard-Hudson are as much as 20 minutes late arriving at school, meaning they miss breakfast, and King and Southfield elementary schools are routinely as much as 30 minutes late being picked up in the afternoon.

“To be truthful, it’s been a problem for years, but people have ignored it,” Jones said.

The survey will remain open through Friday for parents to vote, after which Jones will look at the results and make his recommendation to the school board. The board’s next meeting is scheduled for May 19.

This story was originally published May 6, 2016 at 12:39 PM with the headline "Survey available for Bibb parents regarding bell times."