To make school bus transportation available to more students without raising costs, a new bell schedule has been proposed for the Jefferson City Public Schools.
If approved by the Board of Education, the suggested new school day start and end times would be:
• 7:40 a.m. to 2:40 p.m. for all elementary schools and the Southwest Early Childhood Center.
• 8:45 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. for Jefferson City High School and the Simonsen Ninth Grade Center.
• 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. for the city's two public middle schools.
Chief Financial Officer Jason Hoffman, who presented the plan Monday evening, said after examining the issue for four years, a committee has determined altering the bell schedule is the most efficient way to proceed.
"Transportation is a challenge for all school districts, but it's an even bigger challenge for ours," he noted.
With more than 222 square miles to cover, Jefferson City is almost 90 square miles larger than the average Missouri district, he said. And some sections are sparsely populated, which makes providing bus service inefficient.
Hoffman explained that First Student, the company contracted to provide busing, captures all of its costs in a single route. For example, a "single route" bus traveling from the depot in the morning to Thomas Jefferson Middle School costs $224 a day, plus fuel.
However, adding a second route that same day - for example, if the bus continues onward from TJMS to South Elementary, picking up younger students along the way - costs only $22.46 extra.
So, it behooves the district to take advantage of those double routes, Hoffman suggested, which is what it does.
"Ideally we would start all schools at 8:30 a.m. and they would all be on single routes," he said. "We currently have 34 double routes. But part of the problem is that we have a timing issue."
In some locations, buses deliver students simultaneously with the ringing of the first bell - leaving no time for breakfast. In others, buses don't arrive until 15 minutes after school has ended for the day.
The district addressed the former problem by adding several shorter routes inside the city to collect senior high students. The district also squeezed in a similar route for South and Thorpe Gordon elementary pupils.
"The morning is improved," he said. "The afternoon is not."
Hoffman said there's still not enough time for buses to run the first route and get to the second route on time.
"It's much better this year, but it's still not acceptable," he said.
Hoffman came to the board on Monday to ask if they were willing to move forward with another study. He said a group affiliated with First Student, called First Planning Solutions (FPS), is willing to do the work at no cost to the district, but wanted the board's consent.
The group has set two parameters for the study:
• Students must arrive 20 minutes before school starts to allow time for breakfast.
• Buses must arrive at the buildings before the end of the school day.
"To do these (things), we'd need seven more buses at a cost of $40,000 apiece," Hoffman lamented.
The district's decision to collaborate more between buildings - and sometimes within the same building - has further highlighted a need to adjust the bell schedules. Currently bus drop-off and pick-up times are staggered among the buildings.
Now that the district has implemented late-start days so teachers can collaborate more frequently, they've found it difficult to do so because their buildings start at different times. The Southwest Early Childhood Center has difficulty finding time for faculty meetings because it has two programs on different schedules. And when students need to be bused to certain programs - such as Explore, Enrich, Research (EER) for gifted students - it's a challenge when the buildings aren't in sync, Hoffman said.
"It's hard to share staff between buildings," he added.
If the bell schedule is changed, it likely will impact families, he acknowledged.
Older siblings will no longer arrive home in time to care for younger brothers and sisters in the afternoon. Elementary school students may get less sleep. Athletes will have less time to study if school extends longer into the day, and employed senior high students may not be able to get to work as early.
Board of Education member Joy Sweeney also raised concerns on Monday that teachers may have to make changes to their morning childcare routines if the school day starts at 7:40 a.m.
"Especially in the elementary schools, we have many young teachers who are also mothers to young children," Sweeney said. "It's something we probably need to look into."
He expects it will take FPS until the end of December to complete its study. A recommendation likely will be brought to the board in January, and any new changes would be implemented in fall 2015.