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Starting this fall, school bells will ring in concert at all of the elementary schools in the Mountain View Whisman School District. The new, uniform bell schedule should save money, and fix a hectic transportation situation that often leaves children unsupervised while they wait for their parents or the bus, district officials said.
Another benefit: all K-5 students will receive the same amount of instructional time in the classroom.
Craig Goldman, the district’s chief financial officer, said tightening up programming schedules across all the Mountain View elementary schools has been a goal of the district since it was created in 2001 out of the then-separate Mountain View and Whisman school districts. When the districts merged nine years ago, the existing bell schedules were not modified, resulting in the issues that the new bell schedule aims to fix.
“We were concerned with students not having adequate supervision after school,” Goldman said.
Goldman is taking over as superintendent of the district next month.
In the current system, children in the grades 1-3 are dismissed 20 to 25 minutes before fourth- and fifth-graders. As it now stands, parents with children in different grades have to make multiple trips to the same school every day, leave younger children unattended until their older siblings are let out, or remain on campus during the gap in dismissal times.
The new bell schedule will reduce first- through fifth-grade end-of-day dismissal gaps to 5 minutes at all MVWSD elementary schools. New start and end times will allow fewer buses to transport the same number of students. Next year, two buses — down from three this year — will shuttle about 400 to and from school each day.
The extra driver will be used to operate a bus on special education routes, saving the district money on the pricy outside contractors it has previously used for special education buses.
“While transportation is a key component of the plan, it’s not the driving force behind the change. The two driving forces are student safety and consistent programming,” ” Goldman said.
By assuring that kids don’t have much idle time before heading home from school, he hopes to increase student safety, while simultaneously saving money on after school supervision.
The new bell schedule will also provide more uniformity to the district as a whole, ensuring that each school will offer the same ratio of instruction to recreation.
Next year all schools in the district will begin between 8 a.m. and 8:35 a.m. for kindergarten through fifth-grade students. With the exception of Thursdays and minimum days, kindergartner dismissal times will fall between 1:30 p.m. and 2:05 p.m.; first-, second- and third-graders will be let out between 2:35 p.m. and 3:10 p.m.; and fourth- and fifth-graders will be released between 2:40 p.m. and 3:15 p.m.
“Every solution brings its own problems,” Goldman said, acknowledging that the new schedule may not please everyone. “But overall, we think the alignment of the programs across the district will meet the safety, programatic, and fiscal needs of the district and its students.”
More having to deal with the in-fighting of Whisman people in the district still trying to exert their will. Nine years after the merger and schools in the district were STILL on different bell schedules? C’mon…..
Psst, Whisman hangers-on: it’s over. Your district is no longer and hasn’t existed in years now. Stop and get with the program. Stop fighting over the merger and grow up. The children will ultimately thank you since…. you know, your job tasks are ultimately supposed to be about them, not you. You might have read that somewhere, maybe now is a good time to remind you all.
I think the previous comment is misinformed. Actually Whisman always had uniform schedules and Mountain View is finally adopting theirs? Old Mouuntain View Schools had poorly synchronised bell schedules as a hang over from the old days, and they are going adopt the old Whisman schools schedules.
Who gives a rat’s ass about the old Mountain View School District vs. the old Whisman School District. They were boundaries and nothing more. The district is about children and nothing more. Time to get rid of the old dinosaurs who sew this division and discontent.
Clyde, you’d be surprised how many people who work for MVWSD are still bitter about Whisman going away. Why do you think it took generations for the two to merge in the first place? It was never the MV school district that didn’t want it, it was always Whisman.
And those people are STILL trying to exert some control over it all. They are still fighting that battle.
It’s very dysfunctional and it just hurts the students in the end. But it still goes on in the district office a lot.
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