Dear Principal Pavone, Assistant Principal Rombone and all staff of PS/IS78:

As a PS/IS 78 parent community, we are happy to hear that after many years of negotiating, the United Federation of Teachers was able to approve a contract with the City resulting in benefits that teachers unquestionably deserve for all of the wonderful and hard work they do with our children.

Many of us just received a letter in which PS/IS 78 announces a change to the hours of arrival and dismissal for our students from 8:40 AM to 3:00 PM to 8:00 AM to 2:20 PM for grades K-7, including comparable changes to the hours for Pre-K. We understand that the teachers voted in favor of this change because they were under the impression that the parents would support this change.

We realize that this time change allows teachers the flexibility to add more small-group work and additional enrichment during the day. However, we are deeply saddened by the fact that this decision was not subject to a discussion inviting parent feedback. Many in our community believe that the time change does not benefit the children and parents.

We have learnt that schools have the ability to determine their starting time, and that some of our neighboring schools in Brooklyn, like PS 29 and PS 58, have opted to revert back to the 8:30 AM arrival time after a discussion of the effects an early starting time would have on the families and children.

We are writing you to bring to your attention that this change poses the following obstacles to many PS/IS 78 parents:

- Quality family time with our children is challenging for working parents as it is. In our community many of us have chosen to live in LIC instead of the suburbs because of the short commute and the extra time we get to spend with our family and children. Creating an earlier start time means that families lose a valuable 40 minutes together every morning to make it to school on time.

- In a typical household with two full-time working parents, we only get about 2 hours with the kids in the evenings after getting home from work before they have to go to bed.  If our children will need to go to bed earlier this will leave less time for homework, and again, less time to spend together as a family: 40 minutes is a significant amount of time.

- Many working parents have their children involved in after school activities that are costly as is. This shift will place even more of a financial hardship on parents having to cover an additional 40 minutes per day, five times a week, facilitating after school care and activities for their children.

- There exists interesting research that points to the negative impact that earlier start times can have on elementary and middle school children’s performance:

https://apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/06/school-start-times.aspx​

http://educationnext.org/school-start-times-found-to-affect-student-achievement/

As PS/IS parents, we applaud and admire the amazing and wonderful education and care that you provide for our children every day. But we strongly feel that the current decision that was taken without parents’ feedback will neither improve the educational performance of our children nor enhance the high quality family life that we strive for in Long Island City.

Please include our concerns in this decision making process. We are asking you to please move the new arrival time back to 8:40 or compromise at 8:30 AM to help our children and families. The school administration and teachers may not perceive those 40 minutes as a decisive amount of time, but on a weekly basis these 3 hours and 20 minutes matter tremendously to our families.

Please sign our petition to let teachers and administration know the number of families who this affects negatively.

Jennifer Keenan

Klara Ostrager

Esther Verhalle