Ten Loudoun County elementary schools will start the school day 15 minutes later next year as the Virginia district works to address parents’ concerns about early starts and bus pickup times.
During a county finance and operations committee meeting Tuesday, Director of Transportation Scott Davies detailed the three options the school system considered in response to community feedback.
Ultimately, he said, the county is moving forward with the option for a later start time at 10 schools.
Starting next school year, Aldie, Banneker, Catoctin, Frances Hazel Reid, Kenneth Culbert, Lovettsville, Mountain View, Round Hill, Sycolin Creek and Waterford elementary schools will start at 7:45 a.m. and end the day at 2:30 p.m. Currently, they start at 7:30 a.m.
The shift means Loudoun elementary schools will start at three different times — some at 7:30 a.m., some at 7:45 a.m. and others 8 a.m. Seven additional drivers are needed to implement the plan, according to school board documents, and three of the 10 schools would still have some pickup times between 6:30 a.m. and 6:40 a.m.
The schools getting new start times were selected because they have the earliest bus pickup times.
“Our focus is on customer service and trying to meet the needs of the community,” Davies said. “Obviously, the community has voiced concerns over the early pickup times that we have for our 7:30 schools.”
In 2022, the school district announced plans for some elementary schools to start at 7:30 a.m. and others at 8 a.m. The shift, Board Member Lauren Shernoff said, was the result of a bus driver shortage.
The shift to an earlier time only applied to about half of elementary schools in the county. After the changes were made, Shernoff said some parents worried about dropping kids off at a dark bus stop. Others said their students didn’t want to eat breakfast because it’s too early.
Moving forward with new start times
Before the school board was briefed on the topic, Shernoff had been collecting parents’ feedback on how the start times were impacting their routines.
“These are the metrics that affect moms, dads, voters,” parent Mital Gandhi said at Tuesday’s meeting. Gandhi also urged the division to have all elementary schools start later before ultimately transitioning to an 8 a.m. start time for all district schools.
The county, Davies said, considered two other alternatives to address concerns.
Under one possibility, bell times would be changed to make sure no general education, in-zone student is picked up before 6:30 a.m. That option would require bell times at six schools to be changed by five to 15 minutes. It would also require two more drivers.
Another option, according to Tuesday’s presentation, called for making sure no in-zone, general education student is picked up before 6:40 a.m. That would impact 10 schools and require eight additional drivers.
Because of resignations, retirements and new programs, the county is estimating that it’ll need to recruit 22 drivers for the next school year, not including those needed to address the new start times.
“This was what we call the low-hanging fruit that we could achieve immediately,” Davies said. “We are engaging two different vendors, two different consultants to look at our bell times holistically across the division, and what we could do.”
Some parents are expressing lingering concerns about earlier school start times, as the Loudoun County School Board prepares to be briefed on the schools’ bell schedules next month.
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