The undersigned would like for you to vote against the proposed bell schedule changes for MCSD on Monday, April 17, 2023.

The proposed change in the start and end times for Elementary, Middle, and High Schools will be implemented in the upcoming 2023-2024 school year but not all of the stakeholders were made aware of the proposal in a timely manner with an adequate amount of time for discussions and feedback prior to the date of the voting. We are aware that there were community meetings held but those meetings primarily acted as Q&A sessions and the information shared lacked transparency.

It has been stated that the bell schedule subcommittee and subcommittee advisors considered 4 areas of impact including student performance, student behavior, student-athletes, and student transportation. The changes are being presented as changes that would positively affect "The Whole Child", however, the explanations and research backing the proposed changes, point way more to POTENTIAL positive changes only to the transportation issues within the school district and not so much the "The Whole Child".

Information on the presentation shows numbers but without the data to back those numbers. For instance, there was a pie chart presented showing a percentage of the principals in favor of the changes vs those who aren't, but nothing showing how many principals that was based on. The information about the number of students who utilize MCSD transportation showed 60%, with 630 being picked up before 6 am, 1,890 arriving at school 15 minutes or more after the bell rings, 1,750 picked up from school 15 minutes or more after the bell rings, and 770 being drooped off after 5:30 pm. Those look like alarming numbers but the total number of students in the district was not discussed for a clear idea of how many 60% is. There are 29,000 students in the school district, so 17,400 use MCSD transportation and of those 17,400, approximately 2.2% are picked up before 6 am, 6.5% are arriving late to school 15 minutes or more after the bell rings, 6% are picked up from school 15 minutes or more after the bell rings, and 2.7% are being dropped off after 5:30 pm. Those numbers don't look as alarming so why use the more alarming numbers if there was no intention to make the proposal seem more urgent than it really is?

Basically, the change swaps middle school and high school start times and gives a 25-minute gap between the first and second start times as opposed to a 10-minute gap. So considering the morning traffic and the never-ending construction happening throughout the city, how will a 25-minute gap truly help being that it would only be a 15 minute difference from the current gap? That's the kind of data that needs to be presented. While we agree that we need to make changes to help with the pickup and drop-off times of students who utilize MCSD transportation, we feel like that is more of a human resource issue due to the lack of bus drivers than a bell schedule issue.

We would also like to point out that the subcommittee advisors include a high school principal and an elementary school principal, but no middle school principal. So who advised on behalf of the middle school students? What about the teachers, students, crossing guards, and bus drivers? Why did they not have any representative outside of those who are in administrative seats within MCSD? Why weren't any parents or high school seniors invited to be a part of the subcommittee advisors?

With all due respect to the team of people who took the time to do research on this and create this proposal, the research shared with parents was from 2014 case studies and it only focused on high school students. Are we making decisions for all students based on outdated research for just one group? Also, the information presented doesn't share all of the points in the research shared, it just highlights the parts that would help push the idea of the proposal being a beneficial one. Why not lay out all of the information found during the research? If other data was used or considered, it was not shared. There hasn't been anything shared about the current attendance or behavior data to show an urgent need for improvement in those areas and/or how this change would impact those areas.

This change will impact more than just the transportation area, it will impact several areas of the lives of parents, students, bus drivers, and teachers. The cons could significantly outweigh the pros based on the information shared, the lack of data, and some of the feedback discussed among several parents. So ultimately, you are going to make a decision based on the possible effect on transportation, without considering the fact that not much has been presented on the other areas that are also expected to be affected which are student performance, student behavior, and student-athletes.

We don't think it would be wise to make a decision that would have the magnitude of impact this one could have without having more substantial, up-to-date research and data presented pertaining to ALL expected areas of impact. MCSD's Strategic Anchors state that MCSD will make decisions that benefit student achievement, that are fiscally responsible with an eye on Return on Investment, that invest in stakeholders, and that promote equity and access. That would not be proven if this proposal is pushed through.

Therefore, we urge you to vote no, on the proposed bell schedule change and continue to discuss the matter at hand with hopes of MCSD and its stakeholders finding common ground in regards to a solution to address the things data shows us are our major areas of needed improvement, which the current presentation does not fully convey.

Thank you for taking the time to read this petition. Hopefully, you will take this feedback into consideration when deciding how to vote.