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Dougherty BOE OKs new hours

• The Dougherty County School Board approves new school hours.

Joshua Brown

ALBANY — The Dougherty County School Board Monday unanimously approved staggered start times for its 26 schools in an attempt to “guard the instructional day.”

Under the new school hours, elementary schools will begin classes at 8 a.m. and end at 2:30 p.m., while middle and high schools will begin at 8:40 a.m. and end at 3:40 p.m.

“I think it’s an important (step) for us to guard the instructional day, and we’re going to work diligently to respond to those parents’ concerns (brought up at public hearings),” School Superintendent Sally Whatley said after the meeting.

Because the buses have mechanical problems sometimes, children miss instructional time or breakfast, school officials have said. By restructuring the day, fewer buses will be needed to bus any given group of students to school, freeing up other buses in case of emergencies.

Whatley stressed that elementary school children will not have to be at bus stops earlier than they did with the old school hours. About 11,000 of the system’s elementary through high school students are eligible to ride buses, according to a proposal.

Parents at public hearings held to discuss the change were concerned about the time discrepancy between when their older and younger children would get home, causing supervisory problems for the households, though Whatley said those issues would be remedied as details of the plan are worked out.

The system’s middle and elementary summer school programs will be the first to operate under the staggered start times, with middle schools starting at 7:30 a.m. and elementary schools beginning at 8:15 a.m., Whatley said during a board briefing before the meeting.

Also at the regular meeting:

• The board approved the lease financing of nine new buses, which the school system will own after four years.
• A financial report showed the system with an excess of $255,046 for the month, though Director of Business and Operations Robert Lloyd warned that he expected about $112,000 to be lost to successful property tax revaluation appeals.
• Octavia Conaway was approved as the system’s social worker.

During the briefing, board member the Rev. James C. Bush asked if the school system would be able to provide other workers to wash its buses, saying the part of their job description that requires them to do so is “antiquated.”

Board member Willie C. Weaver said he didn’t know if having children who come through the juvenile justice system would be a good solution because in the future there may be budgeted positions for bus washing. Whatley said the system would try to present a viable alternative to the board by next month.

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