District 63 Changes Start Times For School Day

Students in East Maine School District 63 will have to adjust to new starting and ending times during the next school year under a plan approved by the board of education.

Board members, who oversee schools in Des Plaines, Niles, Glenview and Morton Grove, voted 5-2 Tuesday night in passing the new bell schedule, which is expected to save the district an estimated $420,000 in busing costs. 

The changes (see chart below) will affect students attending  who will be getting up earlier and those at Melzer, Nelson and Washington elementary schools who will be starting–and staying–later.

Several board members expressed concerns about starting the elementary schools after 9 a.m., since many parents have to be work by then, and starting junior high at 7:30 a.m., when research shows that adolescents have a hard time waking up early and learning effectively.

The approved schedule is an alternate to  His recommendation had students at Melzer, Nelson and Washington starting at 8:55 a.m. and leaving at 3:30 p.m. Instead, their school hours will be from 9:05 a.m.-3:40 p.m.

Apollo, Stevenson and Twain elementary schools will start at 8:25 a.m. and be dismissed at 3 p.m. 

Because the two sets of elementary schools dismissal times would be separated by 30 minutes under Bein's proposal, the bus company, Septran, would have to call additional vehicles and drivers into service. That plan would have saved an estimated $260,000, about 40 percent less than under the approved schedule.

The key to the additional savings, Bein said, is to make sure all arrival and dismissal times are separated by at least 40 minutes.

“The savings are such as to make this the most sustainable,” said board member Walter Guzkin. “We’re talking about [a change of] 25 minutes versus 15 minutes and it saves $160,000 times X number of years--that’s three teachers.”

However, board president Jane Wojtkiewicz said the savings did not mean three teachers would otherwise be spared from being laid off.

Changing the school hours was among the recommendations by the district’s financial task force this spring to save money. Others included cutting teaching jobs, ending a number of programs and increasing class sizes.

The task force recommendations were supposed to save an estimated $3.58 million–including $350,000 from shifting the bell schedule. They did not include increasing class sizes, , for an estimated savings of $725,000.

Board members Tom Simmons and Sheila Urban voted against the new schedules.

Urban said the late elementary school schedule could be too much for young students.

“You’ve got a little first grader who’s been up since 6 [a.m.], went to before-school care, sat in school all day, and could be on a bus until 4:15 [p.m.],” she said.

The new school hours:

Gemini

Junior High

7:30 a.m.

(first class at 7:40)