Students in the Philadelphia School District have 50 days left before the first day of school. There is only one problem: after the school district took down the incomplete list of new school opening times posted on its website last week, no one knew when their courses would start.
On Thursday, the school principal, Evelyn Nuñez, sent an email to the school district’s families concerning changes in the school’s start and end times. Officials announced that the school day would be revised. Come back in may.
This letter includes Link to school district website, Anyone can access a file called “2021 Bell Schedule”. But the list is incomplete. When the region posted the information link to Facebook on Friday, Commenter noticed, Pointed out that Parkway Central City Middle School and Ronhurst Elementary School were among the schools that were eliminated.
“Why aren’t all schools listed here…” one person wrote.
“I didn’t see the school at the end of the alphabet on the list…” another added.
By Monday, the link to the Bell Timetable for 2021 on the school district’s website was no longer available, and the user clicking the button to access the document was edited as “School Bell Timetable (coming soon)”.
The school district spokesperson Monica M. Lewis told the Voice of Philadelphia on Monday that the list of school start times announced to parents and guardians last week was not final. She said that before the final timetable was announced, “principals are contacting their school community” for feedback.
The school district has been working hard to implement a “standardized method for daily school start and end times”, allowing all schools to start classes at 7:30, 8:15, or 9 in the morning. Senior senior William Hite said in May that the hope is that the new schedule will reduce the time students spend on buses, solve traffic staffing issues, and make enhanced cleaning easier to maintain.
Lewis said the final timetable “should not be very different from the original timetable” because the region is working to change more than 20 different start times to three.
However, the opening times of some schools on the incomplete list conflict with the district’s integration efforts.Two schools are listed as separated at 7:45 in the morning, and the other two schools are scheduled to separate at 8:30 in the morning. The start time of the four schools is 8:45 in the morning.
When asked about these outliers, Lewis said she did not know that those start times had been included in the incomplete list announced by the school district, and reiterated that there are only three start times this year.She encourages anyone who has questions about the new plan to participate Three virtual forums are scheduled to be held on Wednesday; One forum starts at 11 am, the other two forums start at 5 pm
The district’s planned changes were opposed by school administrators, teachers and parents, some of whom expressed disappointment with comments on Friday’s Facebook posts. Robin Cooper, Chairman of the Association of Commonwealth School Administrators, Tell why The principals’ union was excluded from the discussion of the new timetable.
“The school district made this decision unilaterally and the principals should implement it. This created an atmosphere of mistrust between the community and school leaders,” said Cooper, who was distributed by his union. “Distrust” petition He played against Haite in September last year.
Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Teachers’ Federation, said the district’s approach was “contrary to their past practices,” which caused “a lot of confusion.”
“They did not take measures at the school level, but took district-wide measures,” Jordan said. “…We have a short time to pass the information to the construction representative, although we did. We work hard to ensure that the SDP/PFT joint committee hears and resolves disputes in a timely and fair manner, and in fact, we are still working hard Solve problems in individual schools.”
At a press conference in May, Haite said: “We are aware that the necessary changes to the bell schedule will have a lot of impact on faculty, staff, students and families, so we are seeking the opinions of school leaders.”
Critics of the timetable change also cited Research shows that teenagers benefit from a later start time For the school.Both the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend classes for middle and high school students No earlier than 8:30 am A later start time is better aligned with the adolescent’s natural biological clock, which may benefit their physical and mental health, safety, and academic achievement.
