Well here are a couple of thoughts, I'm sure to piss some people off...
Schedule:
Get rid of the agrarian model that is no longer needed since we are not an agriculture based society where children are expected to be able to work the farm during the summer months. >
For good or ill, many kids work summer jobs that are important to their college savings and/or essential to their family budgets.
Not the schools problem. The number one directive of the school is to educate children. Adjusting school days so that kids have summers off isn't in that directive.
Convert Teachers to 12 Month Employees:>
They already are.
Ahhh, no they are not.
I work in HR in a school system. I'm a 12-month employee and work 250 days a year. Teachers are 10-month employees contracted for 200 days per year of which 180 days are instructoinal days with students present. As a 12-month employee I accrue vacation time to cover periods when I'm not at work. 10-Month employees do not accrue vacation time since they are off during the summer. Both of us accrue sick time to cover illnesses.
Eliminate Extra-curricular Sports Programs as a function of the school.>
Not going to happen, shouldn't happen.
You are probably correct, but that doesn't change my opinion that sport activities should be transferred to the local community entity (country or city) to be run through parks and recreation instead of through the education system.
Not saying such programs should be eliminated, just transferred to the appropriate government entity.
School Hours
School schedules will be designed around maximizing learning in the classroom. For example studies show that high schooler's learn better with later start times due to the fact they stay up later then younger students. Yet often having them out at the bus stop at 06:30 so schools can provide time for after school sports through early dismissal by 13:00-14:00.
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Having busloads of kids stuck in rush hour traffic would work out almost as well as having them run over in large numbers while waiting at bus stops when traffic is at its peak.
Changing hours would change all sorts of day care scheduling considerations, creating more headaches for more families.
Many families depend on the money kids earn in after-school jobs to survive. Unfortunate, but true.
School sports are an important aspect of education.
Rush hour traffic? Horse hockey, buses are out during "rush hour" anyway. You know that not all students are picked up at the same time correct? Schools have a finite amount of funding, bus drivers and buses are not used for just one run in the morning. Complex schedules exist where elementary schools are scheduled for certain time blocks based on distance, middle schools same, high schools same. Between 06:00-09:00 school buses are constantly out picking up students on different schedules to get them to their building and the same goes for the afternoon "rush hour".
"Day Care" again a strawman for the vast majority of cases. High Schooler's don't typically have "day care" needs because they have aged out of day care centers which normally have kids age out in teh 12-13 year old range. Secondly, every day care center we ever used (my wife and I both work) was open until 6:00 PM and opened by 6:30AM, well past minor adjustments in the school day shifting older students to a slightly later schedule.
"After School Jobs", what you think we're talking running schools from 6:00AM to 8:00PM or something? Shifting school hours to better match the sleep cycle of students means moving high school from 7:00AM to 1:30PM to 8:30AM to 3:00PM, still plenty of time for after school jobs.
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