The Clymer Central School Board discussed planned changes to the school day for the next school year. P-J photo by Sara Holthouse

CLYMER — The school day will look a little bit different at Clymer Central School for the 2023-24 school year.

In a recent Facebook post, the school announced a modified start time for grades seven through 12, with the bus schedule set to run 15 minutes later than it has been. Students will arrive at 8 a.m. but homeroom will not start until 8:33 a.m., and in that half hour before homeroom, students will have the opportunity to participate in breakfast and morning jog programs, along with receiving additional homework support and engaging in peer mentoring.

High school students will also have their day shortened to a nine-period day. The school district said the changes were made to help promote collaboration for improved teaching and more direct instruction between teachers and students throughout the day.

A letter with more information and a survey will be sent out to families.

At the latest board of education meeting, parents came to voice their concerns with the changes to the board. Concerns and questions raised focused on elementary students and the change in the bus time.

“It’s really to improve teacher-student connection,” Superintendent Beth Olson said. “More in the seven through 12 with the way the schedules were running is that, on average, students were seeing two study halls in their schedule. By going down to nine rotational periods, we’re able to eliminate one if not both of those study halls.”

Olson said students in kindergarten through sixth grade should not see any changes. The 30-minute change at the beginning will be reallocated into other down time that students already had in their schedules. Students will not lose any recesses as recess will be at the discretion of the teachers.

The half-hour at the beginning will also allow teachers the ability to collaborate with other teachers and professional development. Teachers’ schedules will stay the same.

Everything will be structured time, with elementary and high school students rotating through distributed spaces with supervision, Olson said.

A concern was also brought up about working families without flexible schedules and the change in the bus schedule, which parents said will cause problems getting to work on time.

The upcoming survey will allow more feedback and concerns to be addressed.

Olson said the changes came after analyzing the school’s own schedule.

“It’s not a model that we borrowed from anywhere else,” Olson said. “It was after looking at and analyzing our own schedules and seeing how morning routines were going with this in place, and then a comparison of positives to negatives. The positives outweighed the negatives and that’s why we shuffled in this direction.”

Additionally, Olson said, it was difficult to know when the best time was to give the information to families about the changes, as the school had to make sure it would work and they had just gotten to the point where they were confident that all of the changes would work. The board acknowledged that the change in bus route or transportation times will cause more of a struggle for working families and promised to take that into consideration.

In other news:

¯ the board approved personnel for summer school, which is set to start July 10.

¯ Olson reported a successful graduation and wrapup of the 2022-23 school year.

¯ a security project is underway with installing security cameras, and the wiring is 90% finished.

¯ the board thanked David Maleski for his time on the board and welcomed new board member Rachel Kinal.