OSWEGO, NY – It’s not for whom the bell tolls in the Oswego City School District, but rather when.
At its meeting Tuesday night, the board of education voted to change the bell times at the city’s schools.
This spring, the board modified the start and dismissal times because of the Bridge Street bridge being closed.
The earlier times would allow the bus drivers more time to navigate through the increased traffic due to the detours, board members reasoned.
However, Tuesday’s vote changes the start and end time of the school day back to what it was originally.
“This puts things back to the original bell schedule that we started the school year with,” according to Bill Crist, acting superintendent of schools.
Crist, the district’s assistant superintendent for personnel, had been acting interim superintendent since David Fischer left for a new job in Massachusetts.
Tuesday night the board named him acting superintendent through Aug. 12.
“It put us in a situation where we were paying bus drivers for more hours, more time waiting around, spending (more on) fuel,” Peter Colucci, the district’s business manager, explained. “We reviewed the traffic patterns; based on our assessment, we believe that the risk of a bus being late is no greater based on the bridge closing than it would be on any normal day.”
The district was going to change the schedule back at the end of the bridge project later this fall, he pointed out.
“Looking at where we are right now, rather than make a change into the school year, we’ll make the move before the school year starts,” he said.
The school start and dismissal times are typically published in the school year calendar and posted on the district’s website http://www.oswego.org/
“It goes out to families in the summer to get them ready to understand what’s going on in the school year,” he explained. “Our suggestion is to publish our standard times now; they’re going to be the same for the whole year. The idea being that the impact will be minimal on kids arriving and leaving school.”
The Oswego High School and Oswego Middle School times will return to 7:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
For the elementary schools it will once again be 8:45 a.m. to 3:45 p.m.
missing or outdated ad config
