San Diego City School District officials settled on a school-bell time adjustment plan for the 2008-09 school year that will save the district $1.5 million by cutting transportation costs.
“There’s a list of changes on our Web site,” said Jack Brandais, media relations representative for San Diego Unified School District. “They did this to save money because of transportation costs. They were going to save a million and a half dollars.”
The first plan created by officials changed school start times by almost an hour, which was expected to save the district nearly $3 million by streamlining transportation. But parents, community members and the board of education objected to the original draft, claiming that changing schedules drastically would affect safety and security, day care, joint-facility usage, instructional programs and school enrollment, Brandais said.
So officials revised 2008-09 school start times by 30 minutes or less for 58 schools in the district, including La Jolla High School, whose start time was changed from 7:30 a.m. to 7:25 a.m. LJHS students will leave at 2:15 p.m. instead of 2:18 p.m.
In April, school officials had proposed changing the dismissal time from 2:10 p.m. to 3:45 p.m. at neighboring Muirlands Middle School, which would affect La Jolla High because the schools share athletic fields. The middle and high schools have shared time schedules for years to coordinate athletic programs, and the high school has sunk money into the Muirlands baseball field since LJHS uses the fields for soccer, lacrosse, field hockey and baseball.
At that time, LJHS Principal Dana Shelburne called busing and transportation “the piece that’s wagging that part of the dog.” In 1987, the board voted unanimously to keep the bell the same, according to Shelburne, who added, “What good is a permanent board vote if they won’t follow up with it?”
All La Jolla elementary schools remain the same for next year, according to Brandais.
“They’ve been able to streamline the routes to reduce the number of bus trips. That will cut down on the transportation costs,” Brandais said.
Parents who want more information about transportation or bell-time changes for particular schools can go to the Web site, at http://transportation.sandi.net.