Portland Public Schools (PPS) has recently made the decision to move high school start times up by four minutes next year, from 8:30 to 8:26 a.m. The decision came in the wake of the Portland Association of Teachers (PAT) strike earlier this school year, which ended with the signing of a new teachers contract. Along with a cost-of-living adjustment and new disciplinary guidelines, the contract also required each quarter to end with both a non-instructional grading day and a non-instructional planning day. The extra days for teachers are bound to have a positive impact on student learning by allowing teachers time to complete all grading as well as prepare for the next quarter. However, their addition has raised concerns with the district over meeting state requirements for instructional hours, which resulted in the start time adjustment. Oregon requires 990 hours of instruction for 9-11th graders, and 966 for 12th graders. While I understand the reasoning behind the decision, it is my opinion that the adjustment to the start time was not the best way to regain those minutes
Communication surrounding the new start time has been lacking. I heard about it from my English teacher, but many people I’ve mentioned it to hadn’t heard about it at all. One person I spoke to thought that one minute would be added to each class period of the day, which up until my research for this article was a belief I shared. However, according to PPS Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Schools and Multiple Pathways to Graduation, Margaret Calvert, the intended use of these additional instructional minutes would be geared towards school wide communications. Calvert explained the additional time would not be spread across the day, but rather “there will be one [period] that’s longer that will add a bit of intentionality around [check-ins and communication].”
Initially, learning this only made me more sure this was a waste of time. However, I began to consider the concrete ways that a designated communication time would impact the school. Currently announcements often disrupt class, usually to share information that doesn’t even apply to most students, even while many struggle to spread their own club messages. The new system could allow for more standardized information sharing. However, it does feel a bit disingenuous to me to claim these are important “instructional minutes” we’re making up, only to follow with the information that they will not go to instruction at all.
While I hold some hope for this new system of communication, I am not fully convinced of the overall merit of this decision. Neither, it would seem, are the students of Franklin. Owen Phillips, a junior at Franklin, stated, “It’s not going to stop people from showing up late. It doesn’t actually do anything.” Many students have expressed a concern that the new start time would increase student tardiness. Calvert explained the reason the additional time was added in the morning was because the district was “trying not to change things a lot in order to make this adjustment. So if we [had made] the adjustment at the end of the day… it [would] actually impact transportation a lot for students that are participating in athletics, for example.”
I agree that while adding time at the end of the day could have also caused problems, there’s no reason that additional school days couldn’t be added to the end of the year instead, or even replace some holidays we usually have off, similar to what PPS did on President’s Day this year to make up instructional time after the strike. This would cause less disruption to students’ and staffs’ schedules, and would likely be easier to manage. I also think there would be less student backlash to four fewer Mondays off throughout the year than a four minute earlier start that would require the re-organization of established morning routines.
Overall, while the thought process that led to this decision is understandable, I feel it will cause more problems than it solves, and there were better ways to have reached the goal without causing many of these problems. Only time will tell exactly what the impact of this new schedule will be.
