MISSOULA — A new school year is here and with that comes a new schedule that will hopefully provide more flexibility to both teachers and students.
“There's no perfect schedule. But I think really what we were aiming for this year was continuing to try to provide ample time for our staff to collaborate, to get together to meet. And to really work on student goals” said Missoula County Public Schools (MCPS) Assistant Superintendent Vinny Giammona.
The new start time for kindergarten through fifth grade will be 8:10 a.m. with dismissal at 2:55 p.m., changing from a previous start time of 8:25 a.m. and a 3 p.m. dismissal for kindergarten through third grade and 3:30 p.m. for fourth and fifth grade.
Sixth through eighth grade students will see a start time of 7:48 a.m. and dismissal at 2:43 p.m., changing from an 8:15 a.m. start and 3:25 p.m. dismissal.
Finally, high school students will start at 8:35 a.m. and be dismissed at 3:35 p.m., changing from a 7:50 a.m. start and 3 p.m. dismissal.
The major reason for these schedule changes comes down to the time that teachers had during their day to meet up together to get work done.
“We all struggle to find time and there's never enough time, we know that. But building a schedule so that gives a little bit more time after school for that collaboration was important to us," Giammona told MTN.
With the extra time now at the end of the day for teachers, MCPS hopes that it will allow teachers to be able to collaborate together more, discussing the performance of students and what they can do to ensure their success.
“When, when you look at a teacher's day period, you know, class, course, day in and day out, it can be pretty intense. And so having that longer time at the end of the day — that's uninterrupted where they can come together and work collaborate, talk about student data, talk about what's working in the classroom” Giammona explained. “Really just having those authentic conversations about, about where students are at and what our interventions and what our instruction looks like is really what our focus was."
The reason for the changes to the high school schedule came about from a study that was performed several years ago, looking into what times would be best for the development of high school-age students.
“That study came about and talked about how a later school start for high school would be beneficial. And so they used some of that pediatrician guidelines to help tailor our start time.”
MCPS is ultimately hoping that this new schedule will provide more flexibility at the end of the day for both teachers, students and families.
EDITORS NOTE: For the previous school year (2023-2024) the times were the following: Kindergarten - 5th grade had a start time of 8:15 am and a dismissal of 3:15 pm. Grades 6 - 8 had a start time of 7:50 am and a dismissal of 2:45 pm. For high school (grades 9 -12) the start time was 8:50 am with dismissal at 3:55 pm.
