Greater Latrobe to push back start of school day for elementary students

Greater Latrobe elementary students soon will be able to sleep in a little longer.

Superintendent Georgia Teppert announced student arrival times at the district’s three elementary schools will be pushed back by about 40 minutes, beginning Oct. 12.

Elementary buses have been arriving between 8:20 a.m. and 8:40 a.m., Teppert said. Under the new schedule, elementary doors will open at 9 a.m. and morning announcements will begin at 9:15 a.m.

The change is meant to provide instructors more time to prepare for lessons.

Since the beginning of the school year, the district has provided elementary students the choice of in-class instruction five days per week or full-time online instruction at home.

To promote social distancing during the covid-19 pandemic, Teppert said, the elementary schools follow a rolling drop-off of students over 20 minutes, so large numbers of children don’t arrive at the same time.

But, she said, since teachers are required to be in classrooms throughout that time to supervise arriving students, it has taken away from their prep time at the beginning of the school day.

“We recognize the need for more time for our elementary staff to plan for brick-and-mortar and GLSD online instructional models,” Teppert said.

She said delaying the start time for elementary students was deemed the best way to ensure “the elementary staff will have equitable planning time to the junior high and senior high staff.”

She acknowledged there will be less instructional time in the day, since the student dismissal time won’t change.

But, she said, “We’ve always been over the 900 hours of (annual) instructional time required for elementary students, and we’ll still be well within that.”

Revised elementary bus schedules are to be posted on the district website.