Charleston County School District recently announced that beginning in the 2020-2021 school year, James Simons Elementary start time will be changed to 7:25 AM with dismissal at 2:25 PM. We oppose this change for several reasons. Most of the students at James Simons live in the surrounding neighborhoods and many walk or bike to school. The new start time would mean that for much of the year, students would be walking and biking in the dark on busy streets. This is clearly unsafe. Additionally, the school already struggles with student tardiness and we can only imagine that class time would be more disrupted with the increase in tardiness due to an earlier start time. An earlier start time would create a burden on working parents, requiring longer hours of after school care. Faculty and staff that are also parents would struggle to get their own children to school or daycare at a different location before needing to be at school before the doors open at 7 AM. At James Simons, we only have two buses so there does not seem to be a need to change the start time to accommodate bus transportation. Overall, we believe that starting at 7:25 AM would have a negative impact on student transportation safety, increase tardiness, and place an undue childcare logistics burden on parents, faculty and staff. We request that the start time of James Simons Elementary remain at 8AM. Thank you.