Starting next year, the Haines School will return to its traditional 8:25 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. schedule.
The staff decision, approved last week by the school board, ends a one-year experiment that started students earlier in the morning and kept them later in the afternoon four days per week to create an early dismissal Thursday afternoon for teachers to work on professional development.
Principal Rene Martin reported that starting classes 10 minutes earlier created “a frenzied rush” in the morning, increased the number of tardy students across the board and was tough on older students who need more sleep.
Surveys about the schedule showed most parents found the early release on Thursdays to be “too hard for activities, child care and everything else,” Martin said. “The bulk of our families are on a traditional schedule.”
Perhaps most significantly, going later in the day cut into students’ after-school time with teachers, which Martin described as a concern for parents.
“The 15 minutes we cut out of the day was that time when kids could stretch for a minute, go get their afternoon snack, and at 3:30 really have a solid half hour of homework help. That’s where the bulk of the comments came from parents. It wasn’t so much the parents’ contact time with teachers, it was the concerns about their students’ contact time with teachers,” Martin said.
Thursday’s block of time for professional development also wasn’t long enough for some required trainings that last six to eight hours. “You can’t chunk them up into little bits,” Martin said.