School Board news, notes

By Anna Mitchell  

FEBRUARY 11, 2010 10:08 a.m. (1)

It’s only a difference of 15 minutes, but changing start and release times for tens of thousands of public middle- and high-school students in Greenville County has been five years in the making.

Under the current schedule countywide, elementary schools open at 8 a.m., middle schools at 8:15 a.m. and high schools at 8:30 a.m. In the afternoon, school lets out at 2:30 p.m. for elementary, 3 p.m. for middle school and 3:30 p.m. for high school.

Problem is, students riding the bus in middle and high school are consistently arriving as much as 15 minutes late to class or so close to the bell they have little time to visit their lockers and catch some breakfast. This is because the same school buses dropping off and picking up elementary kids are also used for the older students.

“As it stands, there is not a sufficient window for buses to move from point A to point B in a timely manner,” said the district’s director of maintenance, Burke Royster. “It’s not physically possible.”

Principal Lance Radford of Wade Hampton High said he’s been deeply concerned that a third of his students – the bus riders – have consistently not received a full day’s instruction.

“A lot of times it’s kids who need it the most who aren’t receiving instruction because they are not there on time,” he said.

Starting in the fall, the instructional time for middle and high schools will be shifted forward 15 minutes. Norman Seidel, the district’s director of transportation, said pickup and drop off times won’t change for students; they just won’t be late for school in the morning now that it’s starting 15 minutes later.

School board members voted Tuesday at their regular Committee of the Whole meeting to endorse the change.

Still, about 150 concerned parents and staff have submitted e-mails complaining of the change. Parents who drive their children to school in the morning are worried the 15-minute delay will make them late for work. Others complained the 15-minute delay in the afternoon would interfere with after-school activities and family time.

Several middle- and high-school principals came to the school board meeting to show support for the change. They all said the 15 extra minutes in the morning would give them a chance to enroll students in tutorials. One principal said his music teacher would use the extra time to give students extra instruction on string instruments.

Students routinely get to school an hour or more before classes start, and the principals said they always let kids in out of the cold.

“I usually arrive around 6:30, and there are kids already there,” Radford said, “It won’t stop parents dropping their kids off when they need to. We’ve just learned to adjust.”

School board members also voted on:

* Changes to their termination policy. Employees in Greenville County Schools can be fired if behavior in their private life interferes with their work on the job. The board expanded this policy Tuesday by adding social networking sites as subject to scrutiny. Board member Tommie Reece said she’d heard some years ago about a principal seated at a bar while waiting for a table at a restaurant. He wasn’t drinking but several parents suggested he be fired for appearing there. “Some might think that impairs his ability to do his job; others might think, ‘Ha!’” she said. Anyone fired for behavior that doesn’t involve students, doesn’t involve school property and doesn’t happen on the premises can appeal the decision, the district’s attorney said.

* Changes to Fuller Normal’s charter. Grades five through eight at Fuller Normal will be moving to the old Parker High School this coming fall, and the school will also be adding a ninth grade one year in advance of plans. Fuller Normal’s board chairman, William Brown, said his nonprofit – Campbell Young Leaders – had purchased the old Parker High because Fuller Normal did not have enough money to do so. A contract is in the works, he said, to give Fuller Normal a long-term, virtually free lease to the building. An auditorium at the school, on the National Register of Historic Places, would cost millions to renovate, he said, and plans are therefore on hold to do anything with that part of the facility.

The board received as information:

* Plans for the New South Elementary School on Five Forks Road. The brick, 107,000-square-foot school will have 1,000 students and is designed along the same prototype as Skyland and several others built since 1996. Ten classrooms will be devoted to kindergarten classes. Drop-off lanes for student carpools have been doubled so cars won’t back up onto Five Forks Road near its busy intersection with Woodruff Road. Plans are for the school to be built by December 2011 with students arriving in August 2012.

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Raymond Evans  - Parent complaints   |2010-02-11 12:29:36 Although schedule changes will inconvenience some, it is the right thing to do. If the parents want to pay for dozens of new buses and new drivers, then 'they' can. It is impossible to please everybody, but this was a cheap and immediate solution to an ongoing fiasco. Reply

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