School start time changes put on hold until 2015

The School Committee has elected not to change start times next year at any of the Canton schools, but it is the goal of the committee to implement some changes by September 2015.

Everyone on the committee, along with the administrative staff, believes that high school students could benefit educationally from a start time that is at least 20 to 30 minutes later than the current start time of 7:20 a.m. However, School Superintendent Jeff Granatino said that making the change under the current busing system would negatively impact Luce School students, who would not arrive home until between 4 and 4:30 p.m.

Granatino said he ultimately could not support that change, especially during the winter with the sun setting around 4 p.m.

On Tuesday, June 10, the committee heard from Granatino and school business manager Ken Leon, who agreed that the easiest solution to changing the start times would be to add five more buses to the CHS and Galvin Middle School runs and coordinate them together. However, that would add another $250,000 to the school budget.

Over the past two years, Granatino and a 20-member subcommittee of parents, teachers, and administrators have thoroughly researched the issue of school start times. The latest proposal was to start the GMS day 15 minutes earlier at 7:30 a.m. and the CHS day 35 minutes later at 7:55 p.m. However, doing so would require the Luce School to start around 9:15 a.m. and end around 3:15 to 3:30 p.m. with buses not available until 3:45 p.m.

The committee asked Granatino to shorten the subcommittee to five or six members and research ways that the school system could absorb the additional cost of the buses.

The committee hopes to make a change in time for the 2015-16 calendar year but would give parents enough time to plan for the changes.

School Committee member John Bonnanzio said it was important to also consider the additional students that will require busing from the Avalon housing project on Randolph Street near the Randolph-Canton line. Already the project has added one CHS student and at least six new students have registered for the next school year.

See this week’s Canton Citizen for complete coverage of the June 10 School Committee meeting.

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Posted by Mike Berger on Jun 19 2014. Filed under News, Schools. Both comments and pings are currently closed.