Kids in the Tabernacle Township School District might have 15 extra minutes to sleep in next year, or 15 minutes less, depending on what school they go to and if the board of education moves forward with a new plan for school start and end times.
The plan, presented by district transportation supervisor Rob Hogan at the most recent BOE meeting, would move the 8 a.m. start time of Olson Middle School forward by 15 minutes to 7:45 a.m., and move the 8:30 a.m. start time of Tabernacle Elementary School back to 8:45 a.m.
The proposed changes, which would also affect school end times, come as a result of the district studying bus pickup and drop-off times for the past two years and looking to rectify the 30-minute bus-routing window that Hogan said simply isn’t long enough to get all students to school on time.
“Nine of our 14 routes from the middle school are longer than 30 minutes, so it’s not possible for our drivers with our buses to get the children to school on time, and it’s not possible for them to get back to the elementary school to pick them up on time,” Hogan said.
“There’s just not enough time in the day.”
According to Hogan, the current bus system of 15 drivers transports 379 students daily to and from OMS and 390 students for TES.
Hogan noted the district’s farthest bus route as an example, with the round trip at 29.5 miles, and it is one of the routes serviced four times a day, twice for OMS and twice for TES.
The district’s busing computer program puts the optimal time for a bus completing that trip at 39 minutes, beyond the half-hour difference in middle and elementary school start times and not factoring real-time data.
“The computer doesn’t have real-time data, like traffic, weather, children who aren’t quite awake, wobbling down the driveway slowly, all those things add time to that route,” Hogan said.
Routes such as that make up the majority of what buses must service in the district.
“Sixty-eight percent of our bus runs are currently over 30 minutes in length, and we only have a 30-minute window,” Hogan said.
Even for routes that are 30 minutes or less, Hogan said kids still need additional time before class can start to debark, get to their classrooms, put their coats and lunches away and get settled.
“If you have a bus getting in at 8:20 a.m., they are still losing some instructional time,” Hogan said.
In addition to improving instruction time, Hogan said the longer bus-routing window would also improve safety, as the bus driver would have more time and could go more slowly if need be.
“The drivers are very, very conscientious about getting the children to school safely and on time. There was a driver upset because she was late because the dirt road she was driving on was covered with ice and she only has 30 minutes to do it,” Hogan said.
Superintendent George Rafferty said there are many ways to get students to and from school, and since the district has its own buses and drivers, it has to work to be more efficient where it can.
“This is something we have been looking at for at least a couple of years,” Rafferty said.
