School
Delays Waste Money and Education
Morning darkness cause school delays
- The hour before sunrise is the coldest time
of the day. Sunrise prompts temperatures to rise causing fog to
dissipate and ice to melt.
- School districts in Indiana’s Eastern Time
Zone have excessive numbers of two-hour school delays.
School delays waste millions of education
dollars each year
- A conservative cost of teachers’ salaries is
$7 per student per hour.
- On delay days, teachers are paid while
classrooms are empty and students are waiting at home for travel to
become safe. This equates to wasted education dollars.
- In 2013-2014 alone, $101,000,000 budgeted by
Eastern Time school districts for classroom education was wasted by
school delays.
Quality and quantity of learning is severely
compromised on delay days.
- Most teachers consider “delay days” lost
educationally: schedules are rearranged, class periods are
shortened, and students have difficulty focusing.
- More students are absent on delay days than
on full-length days.
- Whether absent or just not focused, according
to many teachers, students require a repeat of class content
following a delay day.
- Unlike two-hour delay days, school
cancellations are considered cost-neutral both financially and
educationally because cancellations are rescheduled.
On Central Time school delays could be
restricted to 1-hour delays
- This would cut the amount of money wasted and
lost classroom time in half.
- Several Indiana schools districts are calling
for 3-hour delays and extending the day by one hour so that they can
reduce the amount of lost classroom instruction to 2 hours.
- On Central Time it could be possible to
restrict delays to only one hour and extend the school day by one
hour, thus eliminating all lost classroom time. Students would still
be delivered home before dark.
School delays have a significant financial
cost to businesses and employees.
- Children at home on a school delay-day need
supervision causing parents to cancel appointments or business
meetings and deadlines to be missed or delayed. This costs someone.
- Often working parents have to miss work –
either partly or all day – without pay.
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