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I can't imagine weekly early release without some sort of arrangement (like the elementary child care mentioned above).
We always had 2 early release days back to back per semester for elem and middle schools.
I really cannot remember but I notice it now more than ever with my youngest . She is almost 16 , soph in high school and it seems like she is NEVER in school or comes home in directly after noon . This is the best district in the region we live in and we have lived in the WORST ones also and they all do this . Her nearest sibling is 7 years older and did not do this .
She also has to be in her chair in 1st period at 7am. No one can learn like this . MANY , many parents are saying this MUST STOP . It would not shock me if next the kids would have to be in 1st period at 3 am and come home at 9 am . Her lunch is at 10 and she isn't hungry . Good grief . The child is dead tired and alot of parents are complaining LOUDLY about the same thing .
GO TO SCHOOL EVERY DAY - and get it over with .. this subject really gets on my nerves too . It causes them to get out in VERY late June or first few days of July . I wish I could find some links to some studies discussing trying to learn too early for teens . I am just too tired tonight . I'll try to find the ones I found before .
She is home at 2pm and sleeps 3 hours and gets up does her homework, eats , takes a shower and goes back to bed . Up at 4:30 to 5 am ( typical high school teenaged girl - she has to have time to get ready)
We have no after care so thank goodness she is old enough to stay on her own and to the other poster I do not mess with the teachers at all and I DO take care of my own kid . I never bother her teachers ever unless they might email me and say its time for a regular P/T conference which is never in high school . They have a night where everyone comes in and goes to each teacher set up in the gym to go over progress.
I really cannot remember but I notice it now more than ever with my youngest . She is almost 16 , soph in high school and it seems like she is NEVER in school or comes home in directly after noon . This is the best district in the region we live in and we have lived in the WORST ones also and they all do this . Her nearest sibling is 7 years older and did not do this .
She also has to be in her chair in 1st period at 7am. No one can learn like this . MANY , many parents aresaying this MUST STOP . It would not shock me if next the kids would have to be in 1st period at 3 am and come home at 9 am . Her lunch is at 10 and she isn't hungry . Good grief . The child is dead tired and alot of parents are complaining LOUDLY about the same thing .
GO TO SCHOOL EVERY DAY - and get it over with .. this subject really gets on my nerves too . It causes them to get out in VERY late June or first few days of July . I wish I could find some links to some studies discussing trying to learn too early for teens . I am just too tired tonight . I'll try to find the ones I found before .
She is home at 2pm and sleeps 3 hours and gets up does her homework, eats , takes a shower and goes back to bed . Up at 4:30 to 5 am ( typical high school teenaged girl - she has to have time to get ready)
We have no after care so thank goodness she is old enough to stay on her own and to the other poster I do not mess with the teachers at all and I DO take care of my own kid . I never bother her teachers ever unless they might email me and say its time for a regular P/T conference which is never in high school . They have a night where everyone comes in and goes to each teacher set up in the gym to go over progress.
Is your school board elected by the voters? That would be a good place to start. Go to a school board meeting and complain about the time. Vote board members out.
Bet the working parents just love having to come home from work to babysit.
It's not babysitting if it's your own children. Also, the purpose of public education isn't to babysit your children.
Public schools are required to meet a minimum amount of instructional time. If a campus has early out one day of the week, there are two possibilities: the other days are a little longer to make up for that time, or the other school days are simply longer than is required..."bonus" instructional time, if you will.
Either way, while it might be inconvenient for school to end at different times on different days of the week, there isn't a loss of net hours of instruction. Think of it this way; if you're required to work forty hours a week, and you work four nine-hour shifts and one four-hour shift, you still got in your hours.
The town we lived in a few years let kids out 2 hrs early on Wednesdays.
We saw a school in another state let kids out 1.5 hrs early today, also a Wednesday. The district school calendar shows it is a weekly early release.
Bet the working parents just love having to come home from work to babysit. Bet their coworkers love having to cover for the absentees even more.
That did not exist when I was growing up, nor did I even know there was such a thing until 3 or 4 yrs ago.
When did this whatever it is become established, and is it universal in US public schools?
When I was growing up we only went to school half day on Wednesday. When my kids were in school, in the largest county in Virginia, they went half day on Monday. That was eliminated until 2 years ago. It was awful for working parents, particularly poor working parents. I watched 5 and 6 years headed home alone to sit in an empty apartment until their parents got home from work at 6 or 7:00. Just awful.
My kids previous elementary school used to have early release days every other Wednesday. Then a couple of years ago it switched to early release every Wednesday. The kids on those days either went to after school campus club at the expense of the parents, or they usually had a grandparent pick the kids up. Every other week wasn't too bad, but every week was asking a lot of grandma or grandpa, or so it seemed to me from talking to the waiting grandparents. This was in California. Then we moved to Wyoming where the kids have zero early release days but instead they get two or three Fridays off a month instead. Now personally the kids and I love the long three day weekends, but it does make we wonder who's watching the kids all those Fridays they have off. I am a SAHM so it doesn't affect me the way it does the households with two working parents.
It seems weird to me that if this is such a problem, no entrepreneurial- or community-minded people have stepped forward with options for that time. Seems like it would be a perfect weekly meeting time for something like scouts, or some other activity, or for churches to do CCD or youth Bible study, or for community sports, or for a drop-in tutoring and enrichment centers, or...basically, sky's the limit. Here you've got a nice, regularly scheduled chunk of time that doesn't bite into family evenings, seems like it shouldn't be so hard to fill it with something positive.
When my son went to school in NYS, there were so many half days for various reasons, there seemed to be few full weeks. Our granddaughter is going to school in FL now and there are no half days or early releases, conferences or training days are full days off and there are not an excessive amount of them.
I taught in Hawai'i and kids got out early every Wednesday (one hour early). This was time devoted to staff meetings and professional development. I often left later on Wednesdays because of meetings running over than I did on other days. We moved up to the Northwest, and they also have early release on Wednesdays for staff development (I'm no longer in the classroom, so I don't know what it looks like- I assume the same). So for the last 14 years, it's been the norm in the two places I've lived. It's not the norm in my hometown, though. They still go full day, 5 days a week.
I have to agree. When I was a classroom teacher most of us disliked early release days as the meetings often ran longer than the regular school day, and then you still had to do your regular lesson planning, report writing and preparing for the next school day after the meetings were over.
Of course, the parents did not realize that so some of them thought that we had "extra time" on those days not far less time.
I really cannot remember but I notice it now more than ever with my youngest . She is almost 16 , soph in high school and it seems like she is NEVER in school or comes home in directly after noon . This is the best district in the region we live in and we have lived in the WORST ones also and they all do this . Her nearest sibling is 7 years older and did not do this .
She also has to be in her chair in 1st period at 7am. No one can learn like this . MANY , many parents are saying this MUST STOP . It would not shock me if next the kids would have to be in 1st period at 3 am and come home at 9 am . Her lunch is at 10 and she isn't hungry . Good grief . The child is dead tired and alot of parents are complaining LOUDLY about the same thing .
GO TO SCHOOL EVERY DAY - and get it over with .. this subject really gets on my nerves too . It causes them to get out in VERY late June or first few days of July . I wish I could find some links to some studies discussing trying to learn too early for teens . I am just too tired tonight . I'll try to find the ones I found before .
She is home at 2pm and sleeps 3 hours and gets up does her homework, eats , takes a shower and goes back to bed . Up at 4:30 to 5 am ( typical high school teenaged girl - she has to have time to get ready)
We have no after care so thank goodness she is old enough to stay on her own and to the other poster I do not mess with the teachers at all and I DO take care of my own kid . I never bother her teachers ever unless they might email me and say its time for a regular P/T conference which is never in high school . They have a night where everyone comes in and goes to each teacher set up in the gym to go over progress.
There are many, many studies that show that high school should start later. All the high schools in my area switched their HS starting times to later six to ten years ago (and even before that classes started between 7:20 and 7:30 none started as early as 7 AM). Most 1st hour classes now start around 7:45 or even 8 AM. Zero hour, usually starting around 7:15, is now devoted to homework help or extra practice or clubs and it is completely optional.
Ironically, in my area, it was teachers and administrators pushing for the later start time but it was groups of parents putting up a huge fuss against it. I'm not exactly sure why (as I taught at the elementary level) but at least some of the reason was that the later start interfered with after school jobs and afterschool sport practices, games and competitions for HS students, and sometimes meant that HS students could not get home early enough to babysit younger siblings after they got out of school.
BTW, if your daughter needs to get up at 4:30 or 5 AM to get to school by 7 AM, I wonder if she is taking too much time getting ready or if she is concentrating too much on her "hair & make-up" being perfect and her clothes being "perfect". Ask the parents of other teen girls to see when their daughters are getting up.
My daughter used to brag that she could get up 15 minutes before leaving for school and be ready to go, and her friends took 30 minutes & sometimes a little more (although they did not take showers in the morning, especially since their HS had four years of required gym class).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pupmom
Is your school board elected by the voters? That would be a good place to start. Go to a school board meeting and complain about the time. Vote board members out.
Good points.
Parents run schools. If many parents truly want HS to start later then get involved and it will happen. But keep in mind, that there may be issues that you, and other parents, are not aware of that are causing problems. For example, when our HS started later there was a ripple effect across all of the elementary schools & MS starting times, which greatly angered other parents, and there were huge increases in transportation costs because the buses could not be utilized as efficiently. The cost increases angered many of the retired and childless citizens in our district who kicked out/voted out some school board members who had voted for the later start times at the HS.
Last edited by germaine2626; 03-10-2017 at 06:39 AM..
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- and get it over with 
