Stafford County Public Schools should revert to the schedule used in the 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 school years (pre-COVID). The current and future school schedules are not the solution. It is negatively impacting students, bus drivers, and teachers alike.

For high schoolers, the schedule is causing activities to end around 6 pm or later, and as a result, it's impossible to get jobs. The lack of students with jobs is directly contributing to the workforce shortage. As a result, businesses cannot be open on certain days; for example, Mian has to be closed on Tuesdays because it does have enough employees.

With the new schedule change, high schools with four lunches will have to have their last lunch of the day starting at 2:05. The proposed schedule change also makes it so sports and activities will also have to let out around 6:30 or 7 pm. There's also the issue of activity buses to take kids home. It's impractical and a disincentive to make bus drivers run bus routes around 7-8 pm. Without the activity bus, many students will be deprived of joining activities and sports. Using the old schedule resulted in less congestion with buses and fewer scheduling conflicts.

There are also travel programs which involve bussing students to separate schools. Over the past month, travel students were consistently late to class. In the past, students would usually miss around 10-15 minutes for one class period. With the current schedule, some buses, for example like those like Mountain View, consistently arrive at their travel school an hour late. Some students can't even make the travel bus because it leaves before their normal bus reaches their base school. For context, travel buses leave around 9:40-9:50 (20-30 minutes after school starts). Travel buses being later than previous years has led to many students being behind on classwork. As a result, teachers have to plan around their absences and tardies. Some students have resorted to taking their travel classes virtually, so they wouldn't have to miss as much. It works for some travel classes, but for others, it can be detrimental.

The new schedule also puts parents in a difficult situation. It used to be possible for older students to pick younger siblings up from elementary school buses. Now, elementary schoolers get home before their older siblings. Parents then need to leave early from jobs to find a way to get home in time to pick their child up from the school or bus stops. It's hard enough to schedule around these changes in a typical school year, but we're still in a global pandemic.

It also inconveniences bus drivers. The old schedule allowed for more time between different levels of schooling, and it was easier for buses to arrive on time. Bus drivers, now, are overworked and are still underpaid. They have 30 min to complete an hour-long route. They're automatically made late for their next route. It backs up the buses through all levels, and students are consistently late for class.

Stafford County needs to resort back to the old school schedule. The current schedule has had over a month to try to sort out kinks but to no avail. The proposed schedule may help students be on time, but it leave high schoolers without a chance to do activities and have jobs, gives bus drivers even longer hours, and makes life even harder on students and families. They have tried, but sometimes experiments fail. We need to revert.