School Start Times

Recently in Iowa there was an announcement that waivers wouldn’t automatically get approved for schools to start at an early date.  A school would have to show that a later start would have a negative educational impact and get approved by the director if they wanted to start early, meaning before the Iowa State Fair.  While that may benefit some school districts close to the Des Moines area, the later start date will definitely hurt most students in the Cedar Rapids Community School District and our Superintendent and School Board should consider filling out a waiver to have our normal start date of before the end of the Iowa State Fair.  If you are not familiar with this new change, here is a website that explains in detail what has been said and what will be done in the future for an early start date. 

 The main reason for having a later start date was to make sure that students could work and go to the Iowa State Fair.  By doing a recent survey in one of my classes, I found out that the people who don’t go to the Iowa State Fair still wouldn’t go even if there was a later start date in the school year that would allow them to. Most of the kids in my school district don’t work at the Iowa State Fair, which would have caused them to miss the first week or so of school.  The Iowa State Fair doesn’t impact most of the student in my district, so the whole district shouldn’t have to suffer with a later start date.

 Educationally it will hurt most of the Advanced Placement students because although our schools will be starting later, our Advanced Placement exam dates will not.  It just means that there would be less time to learn and study information for the exams.  I would then expect that the test scores would be worse because it already feels like there isn’t enough time to prepare for the exams.  If a student is spending time in class for an exam and if they spend a lot of money on an exam, it would only be fair that they get a fair amount of time to prepare for the exam so they can pass.  

 It was also said that if school was started later, there would still be football games that would happen around the same previous dates.  There would then be around three football games that take place before school even has a chance to start.  With school not being in session and there still being football games, I would think that not as many students would show up to the games.  Fewer students attending games means less money raised at the sporting event that would have gone back to the school.  The school would then receive less money and there would be a lower budget that could then educationally impact the students negatively.  

 Although it may be nice to not start school so early and have what would seem like a longer summer, it would just push back the final day of school.  School would then cut into summer activities that may include college events, church camps, and sports camps.  A student would then have to balance all of those activities together which would most likely cause more stress and a possible decrease in grades.  With all of that being said, the school start dates should not change to be after the Iowa State Fair ends.  It will negatively impact the students educationally and personally.