Many Point Loma families are faced with terrible new starting times for our schools next fall.  Loma Portal and Sunset View elementary and Dana and Correia middle school families won’t have their children leaving school until nearly 4 p.m.  This provides challenges for working parents in the morning. Many families will now be forced to pay extra for before-school childcare so they can drop off their kids and still get to work at a reasonable hour.  These hours likely won’t be used for homework, either at daycare or at home.  The morning is when kids get up, get set for the day and get going to school.  Any members of the school board who are parents should know this. In the afternoon, afterschool activities are now going to have to start later.  In the winter, practices will have to be curtailed for outdoor sports.  Our son rides his bike to and from school, but it will be too dark during the winter months. Later starts will negatively impact physical fitness for student riders and walkers, increase gas costs for parents who now have to drive their kids and crowd afterschool homework time into the family dinner hour.  Additionally, submarine base SSC-HQ, COMTHIRDFLT employees leave the south end of Point Loma at 4 p.m. Now, the San Diego Unified School District board is putting thousands of students on the roads at the same time; seems like a recipe for disaster. I have no doubt the school board and The Beacon are being inundated with information about how ill-informed, short-sighted and potentially dangerous the new school hours are.  Pointing out flaws is important, but I would also like to offer two potential solutions that would allow the buses to run efficiently and classes to be held earlier for elementary and middle schools on the Point.  I hope the school board would consider either of the following; 1.  Switch Point Loma High School (PLHS, 7:45 a.m. to 2:25 p.m.) and late-start elementary and middle school times.  It is my understanding that high school students should start later, not earlier in the morning to increase their chances of academic success.  They are, presumably, also better able to get themselves to class without adult supervision and many of their afterschool activities are on campus.  Why not swap current early high school bus trips with elementary/middle school trips to Sunset View, Loma Portal, Dana and Correia (which I think are four latest starters in Point Loma)?  In other words, why not start high school later and these four schools earlier? 2. Elementary schools don’t have training most minimum days.  I think all Point Loma schools have Thursday minimum days.  They end nearly three hours early.  Why not eliminate minimum days and end each day 30 minutes earlier (3 hours = 180 minutes divided by 5 days a week = 36 minutes a day, rounded down to 30 minutes a day)?  Let teachers train before school on the occasions they need to.  Currently, at least Marshall Middle School in Scripps Ranch doesn’t have weekly minimum days, so the idea must be doable.  I’m sure there are other ways to meet these challenges.  I hope the school board will consider my and other parents’ proposals and bring some reasonableness to bell times in Point Loma.  Surely the school board can find a way to avoid endangering children on our streets, curtailing time for homework and family dinners, allowing fewer opportunities for extracurricular interests, stressing parent work schedules during this challenging economy and increasing childcare costs. — Kirk Mather is a substitute teacher from Point Loma.