The Stafford County Public Schools Board of Supervisors has yet again changed the schedule for all students. The Board has continued to delay the start of school more and more, thinking that it will help with transportation issues that our county is currently facing with bus transportation. While their solution may make sense to them, their decision has not taken into account the sacrifice and extra efforts that students, parents, and teachers have been giving, and now the Board is asking for more. 

Due to the current pandemic, our world has been facing, ever since last school year when students came back into the building with the hybrid model, school start times have been delayed by approximately 2 hours, with the end of all classes being delayed by approximately an hour and a half. Under recent changes, the school board decided to back up the school start times by yet another half hour, causing school end times to be delayed by another half hour. High School previous, along with current start and end times can be shown below.

2019-2020 School Year: (High School, before COVID-19): 7:40 am to 2:15 pm

2020-2021 School Year (High School): 10:00 am to 3:00 pm

2021-2022 School Year (as of August 9th, 2021, High School): 9:20 am to 3:30 pm

2021-2022 School Year (proposed to start on September 27th, 2021, High School): 9:45 am to 3:55 pm. 

As it has been voiced by many students and staff of the SCPS community, these schedule changes from 2019 have impacted everyone involved with SCPS greatly. Teachers are required to stay later at work when they should be able to go home and spend time with their families. Students have to stay longer at school, which affects High School students exceptionally with a great number of students having jobs, extracurriculars, sports, and more. Students also have to sacrifice sleep by staying up later in the night for the need to complete homework, especially those that are in Advanced classes, such as AP and IB. Parents have to yet again change their schedules with their jobs in order to accommodate their students needs for rides home. 

Overall, it is clear that the Board has made yet another decision that will ultimately be detrimental to all parties involved in the SCPS community. It is time for action to be taken by the community, and our voices to be heard. Sign the petition today if you are in support of the SCPS Board reverting back to the normal school hours we had before. Let's create change in order to better our education as we push forward on the path to normalcy!