The Tyrone Area School Board approved a new bell schedule for the 2006-07 school year at its most recent regular meeting.
\nAssistant Superintendent Joanne Lang said the instructional day would be increasing about 15 minutes.
\n\u201cWe were having a very difficult time getting in our instructional day, especially at the elementary level,\u201d said Lang. \u201cWith No Child Left Behind and state standards, our time was short trying to meet the demands.
\n\u201cBesides, especially at the elementary level, our kids were arriving earlier,\u201d said Lang. \u201cThe parents were dropping them off earlier anyway. So we decided if they are here let\u2019s start earlier.\u201d
\n For the 2006-07 school year, parents transporting children are being asked not to arrive before 7:50 a.m.
\nThe schedule calls for the arrival of professional staff at 7:55 a.m. Breakfast from 7:45 to 8 a.m. with students being released to homeroom at 8 a.m. Grab-n-go breakfast will be available from 8 to 8:10 a.m. with a tardy bell at 8:10 a.m.
\nK4 dismissal for the a.m. session will be at 11:30 a.m. Arrival time for the K4 p.m. session is 12 noon. The student lunch period will run from 10:55 a.m. to 1:05 p.m.
\nThe dismissal time is set for 3 p.m. with dismissal occurring from 3 to 3:25 p.m. for students and 3:25 p.m. for staff.
\n\u201cWe also got rid of flex time,\u201d said Lang. \u201cOur teachers don\u2019t have flex time anymore. If a teacher came in early, they got to leave early once the kids were dismissed.\u201d
\nLang said the new schedule would help (elementary) teachers with planning time. The schedule will be seven and one-half hours for the teachers.
\nThe middle school schedule calls for teachers to be at their duty stations at 7:45 a.m. with a dismissal of 3:15 a.m. At the high school, teacher arrival is listed as 7:45 a.m. with dismissal for teachers at 3:15 p.m.
\nThe district\u2019s middle school addition and expansion project is scheduled for completion in May and fifth graders will be moving from the elementary to the middle school.
\nAt the middle school, grades five and six will be dismissed at 2:55 p.m. with dismissal for grade seven and eight bus students at 3 p.m. Dismissal for other seventh and eighth grade students will be at 3:05 p.m.
\n\u201cWith fifth grade being moved to the middle school we were able to reorganize our schedule, which was good for longer instructional days,\u201d said Lang. \u201cAlso, we were able to condense the amount of periods for lunch. Before we used to have four lunch periods for middle school, now we are going back to three lunch periods.\u201d
\nThe amount of time between periods at the middle and high school is being reduced to three minutes.
\n\u201cReally the kids only need three minutes in between classes,\u201d said Lang. \u201cWe were able to take minutes from all over to increase instructional time. The instructional day was important; we needed more minutes. Our elementary teachers were having a difficult time getting their curriculum in.\u201d
\nLang mentioned another change at the middle and high school level.
\n\u201cWe eliminated homeroom,\u201d said Lang. \u201cKids actually just go to the first period. Everything will be done at that period. Once again, we gained minutes by dropping homeroom. The other thing we did at the middle school and high school is at the end of the day (there) is (a) 35-minute advisory period. That was big because kids have band lessons, clubs and organizations. They can do all that in that period. It\u2019s more so (new) for the high school. We redesigned it for the middle school more or less. They\u2019ve been doing activity periods (at the middle school.)\u201d
\nLang said the time can be used for sustained silent reading and advisory issues.
\n\u201cThe nice thing about it is it\u2019s the last period of the day so there are no interruptions during the day,\u201d said Lang.
\nShe said the middle school project would be completed around May 7 or 8. Principals will be meeting with staff to deal with moving logistics. School board members are making plans to tour the addition. Lang said an open house for the public would be scheduled at a later time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Tyrone Area School Board approved a new bell schedule for the 2006-07 school year at its most recent regular meeting. Assistant Superintendent Joanne Lang said the instructional day would be increasing about 15 minutes. \u201cWe were having a very difficult time getting in our instructional day, especially at the elementary level,\u201d said Lang. \u201cWith […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}