Waking Up to a New Schedule

The school and activity buses in the Watauga High School bus lot. Photo Credits: Amelia Bennett

Amelia Bennett, Staff Writer and Translator for The Powderhorn

Students across the county are waking up and leaving for school even earlier than before. This is because Watauga County Schools have implemented more hours in the school day in both K-8 schools and at Watauga High School beginning this school year. The reasoning behind this has to do with multiple factors. The county needs to be in compliance with the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) in order to have enough time scheduled for early literacy in K-8 schools, and the added time will also allow for schools to have more flexibility with winter weather.

Watauga County Schools’ Superintendent Dr. Leslie Alexander has had to work with other county administrators to work out the new schedule in order to meet requirements. 

“We ended up initially even looking at the time of the school day because we were trying to give ourselves a little more flexibility with the number of remote learning days that we call. It's not everybody's favorite method for instruction, but we have calendar law we have to be in compliance with,” said Alexander. “We're never going to get rid of remote learning because of the weather that we have here, but if we can lessen the number of those and still get the hours required and be compliant with calendar law then [extending the school day] is one way that we can do that.”

Schools in the area want to maintain high performance from students to ensure the best education possible. When looking at top schools across the state, the main connection between them is their ability to reach required hours.

 “If you look at Chapel Hill or Union County, who are usually top one and two, they're getting the required hours,” said Alexander. “They don't have the winter weather that we do. In order to set our students up for success and make sure that we're giving them the best education possible, we want to get the most minutes and hours that we can and ensure high quality instruction.”

Though the time added to schools was only 25 minutes to K-8 schools and 10 minutes to the high school, administrators and faculty still had to learn to adapt to the new schedule. The Transportation Manager for Watauga County, Janet Tanner, and Transportation Administrative Assistant, Heather Strickler, have had to work out details surrounding the change in schedule concerning bus routes.

“We have not made any major adjustments to the times,” said Tanner. “The afternoon has been a little trickier with elementary getting out later and getting to the high school. The first couple of weeks, I would say, it was pretty tough, but it's really slowed down and everybody seems to be on a good routine now.”

The bus drivers and coordinators had several things to take into account when planning bus routes with Appalachian State starting class and student drivers getting used to the changes.

“It's been the typical beginning of the year, traffic issues that are to be expected with high school drivers and high school traffic and then even with the K-8 schools we make adjustments,” said Strickler. “Our bus drivers are fantastic and [with] the K-8 starting earlier, our bus drivers just have adapted to that. They're great with the extra early time. It doesn't phase them to be up and get their buses going at 5:30, 6:00, whatever it is in the morning. They've done well.”

Teachers and faculty in the county are also having to adjust to the new schedule. Fortunately, the bus routes provide transportation for children of faculty from all elementary schools to the high school. 

“I have a 3rd grader and a 6th grader. As far as our mornings, it really hasn't changed anything about our mornings, and it just means that we leave the house a little bit earlier,” said Sumer Williams, a math teacher at Watauga High School. “They'll ride the bus here, which is a really nice benefit as a staff member here is that our children ride the bus here from Hardin Park. I have not been impacted much by the time change. However, I totally understand that other families maybe have been more impacted than my family has.”

After last year’s winter weather, schools in the county had three remote days in a row. This was not ideal for teachers and students. The county’s ultimate goal is to have the least amount of remote days during the school year. 

“We've had 13 or 14 remote learning days [each year] over the past couple years. If we were able to reduce that to 9 remote learning days and have the rest as traditional snow days, that's a little bit easier on folks from an instruction and learning standpoint,” said Alexander. “I will say I'm really proud of our teachers and our parents and our families because people have adjusted, they have been getting to school on time and people have really been great partners and making sure that this transition works effectively for students.”