Chicago district will coordinate school schedules across the system

From The Chicago Sun-Times: Schools in the Chicago district will coordinate their schedules so that they open and close each day within a one-hour assigned window. Officials call the new bell schedule as a “safety’’ improvement that also would create more efficient bus routes, but one critic denounced it as “dictatorial.” All elementary schools will be assigned an opening time between 7:45 and 8:45 a.m. and an end time between 2:45 and 3:45 p.m. High schools will open between 7:30 and 8:30 a.m. and end between 3 and 4 p.m. Charter schools do not have to follow the new bell schedules. The staggered starts will enable more bus routes to service multiple schools, for a “significant,’’ though unspecified, savings, a district official says. Schools may seek to change their assigned bell times if they “demonstrate a significant safety and/or instructional issue with their school’s proposed start and end times,’’ the district says.