Division in the Colorado Springs community has arisen after Academy District 20 decided on new start and end times for the 2023 – 2024 school year. Parents and teachers alike have had issues with these changes, especially for the elementary schools. Parents are worried that younger children won’t wake up in the morning early enough for school. One parent named Lindsey Jensen made a petition on Change.org that received over 2000 signatures of people who were against the changes.
According to Fox 21 News, these changes were proposed on January 19th during a school board meeting, but had been previously discussed for two years. They have since been approved and finalized by the district.
As of February 7th, the district postponed these changes by one year due to parental concerns. So they will now be most likely placed into effect during the 2024 – 2025 school year. The proposed schedule in question has elementary school starting at 7:30am and ending at 2:30 pm, middle school from 8:50 am to 3:55pm (excluding Challenger Middle School which starts at 8:20 am and ends at 3:25), and finally with high school going from 8:10 am to 3:15pm.
This issue was also brought up at one of the district’s school board meetings. Some parents just stated that they wanted the conversation about the new times to be open for discussion. According to KKTV 11 News, the district had received over 150 emails about their decision.
Not only is District 20 coming up with new start times, but our own district, District 11 is thinking about changing to an 8-period block schedule according to the superintendent. This won’t affect start or end times. It is not known if this schedule will be put into effect. This will give us an 8th class that will either be a free period, or maybe they’ll let students take an extra class.
These changes were further discussed during a meeting at Doherty High School attended by many staff members, parents, and students alike. It seems based on the questions proposed at the meeting that the district is heavily in favor of the block schedule idea. This will give a longer time for teachers to give instruction, and for students to do their homework. For some classes, almost an hour and a half seems like too long of a class period, and some voiced concern about this. One main concern is that if the class periods are that long, students might be more inclined to skip. They’ll leave to go to the bathroom after maybe an hour and never come back.
