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Welcome to Second Listen Saturday on the
Parenting Roundabout podcast, where we share some

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fun moments from a past episode for
your weekend listening pleasure. Look for new

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episodes every Monday through Friday. Today
we are complaining about high school schedules.

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Now, yeah, Catherine has her
own little issue with high school schedules,

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but I thought I would start with
my issue that I've had with high school

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schedules since my kids, you know, started high school and now have subsequently

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finished. And that is the start
time of high school. They had like

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a daily schedule where they went to
every class each day. But our schools

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here in California, the high school
started at seven thirty am and then ended

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at two o'clock in the afternoon.
And I'm telling you that was just so

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hard on everybody involved. Yeah,
it was such a bad time. And

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I know they say that while even
if we were to start school later,

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the kids would still go to bad
later, but it was inhumane. There

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is like scientific evidence that their body
clocks just work that way that they they

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naturally want to stay up later and
wake up later. It's just the way

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their brains work at that age.
And so yeah, and so like two

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years ago, I became involved in
kind of this local movement to start school

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later. There's actually an organization,
I believe it's national. It's called Start

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School Later. And so one of
my friends created the community branch that we

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live in here, and her and
I were part of that trying to advocate

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to get the schools to start later, because yeah, there's a lot of

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medical evidence that says that early start
times are not only a risk to the

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student themselves, but a risk to
others because they're driving to school tired,

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they're coming home tired, they're you
know, the decision making skills are not

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the greatest. So there's a lot
of side effects to this type of schedule.

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And when we pushed it, when
she pushed it, because she did

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a lot of the leg works,
she found out that the reason for these

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this early schedule, at least an
our area, was because of busing,

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because they had to get around busing, and then the high school sports,

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so you know a lot of the
sports teams were reliant on certain times of

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the day, and it just it
just made no sense because there are schools

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in other parts of the state don't
start that early and still manage to have

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all their busting and sports teams coordinate. So it just seemed like it was

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a decision that was made by a
couple of people and they stuck to it

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because you know, maybe it was
because they needed daycare. But it just

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does not It didn't work, and
it didn't work for a lot of It

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didn't work for my daughter, it
didn't work for my son, it didn't

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work for a lot of their friends. I mean, she was exhausted twenty

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four seven, and so I have
a huge act to grind with the start

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times of schools. But you have
another issue, right, Catherine, Well,

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I mean, I don't know if
it's an issue or not yet because

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it's brand new for this upcoming school
year that they're going to a block schedule

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where the kids will have instead of
having you know, seven class periods a

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day, they'll basically have four long
ones every and then it'll be in every

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other day schedule where you know,
on day one they have these four classes

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and on day two they have actually
these three classes, plus they are doing

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this advisory it's called which is I
think kind of like a homeroom type thing,

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like it's not a study period.
I really don't know what they're gonna

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do during that time. So that's
one question that I am so yeah,

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So I just don't know. I
think that there has also been research on

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this, and that says that it's
good that, you know, teachers like

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it that they have more time with
their students. They can do work time

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as well as like lectures or whatever
they're doing. So I don't know.

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I'm just I'm I'm keeping an open
mind, but I'm curious as to how

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it's gonna go. You know,
when I look at my kids hands,

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like, oh well, this is
kind of you know, you automatically have

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at least two days to do homework, right because you don't have that class

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the next day, So that seems
good. And my daughter says that the

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teachers have been told that they can't
give him twice as much homework because you

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have two days to do it,
and so I hope that's the case.

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I don't know. I mean,
Nicole, as a teacher, have you

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dealt with this? Have you thought
about this? The block scheduling. I

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haven't ever been part of it as
a teacher, but I was through my

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high school years. We had block
schedule. That's all I've ever known,

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and we always had kind of an
open block to catch up and whatnot.

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And that's the same thing that I've
heard because with my daughter, there's another

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high school in town that did block
schedule. Her school didn't, and her

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friends were able to stay far more
on top of their work than what she

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did because they had this kind of
study hall type thing where they could catch

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up on work. And it just
seemed like the homework wasn't it wasn't an

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every night thing, you know,
it alternated. It wasn't you know,

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every subject every night for homework.
It was a history like every second or

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third night type thing. So it
just seemed to really it work for It

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was helpful for kids who didn't have
a lot of time outside of school.

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Yeah, they were able to keep
up with it inside of school, So

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yeah, they really liked it.
Well that if that's the case, that

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would work well for my son,
who is not real good work out that

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not the greatest at doing it in
school either, I have to say,

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But I feel like if everybody's doing
it, and if that's the way that

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class time is it up, than
maybe he'll I don't know. No,

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they the people, I mean,
they had nothing bad to say about it.

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They they were you, it was
good. It would have been great.

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If Kristin could have had that opportunity. I think it would have worked

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for her. And it is more
like a university schedule. Yeah, that's

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very true. It's a good purp
every other day and slightly longer class times.

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Is it one that rotates where you
start, like you know, period

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one, two, three, and
then four or five, and then the

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next day would be six and then
back to one two? Is it that

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kind of No, it's day one
and day two. So on day one

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you have you know, algebra,
science, English and okay French, and

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then on day two you have choir
and history and you know some other thing.

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So you have to keep and that
I've had experience with, um not

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did they not do it lessure at
the middle school? They did that some

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of the time that my kids were
there before. They had the day one

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and the day too, and I'd
always be like, is it a day

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one? Do you need your jim
close? Do need your instrument? Yeah?

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Stuff, You've got to like write
it on the calendar or something so

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you haven't joasted to remember, because
otherwise it's impractical. Is this hard for

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some kids who for whom a longer
class session is not necessarily a good thing.

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I mean, I think of my
auntie boy, and you know,

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a regular a regular class is hard, and then you know it's good to

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get that period of walking around in
between. So well, I think the

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idea is not so much lecture for
that entire time, but to have the

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kids doing some type of follow up
activity and then yeah, teacher monitoring,

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you know, assessing it time person
you know, labor right, Yeah,

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I hope that's the way they'll do
it, but you never, you never

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one account on something being done the
way it's supposed to be done. Yeah,

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um, yeah, I mean,
as with everything else, it's going

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to be good for some learners and
bad for some learners. And yeah,

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you know it's just the ones that
for whom the existing thing was bad get

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their turn now, right, so
and somebody else will be unhappy. Yeah.

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You know, if you have that
one class that you feel good and

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valued in and now you only get
in half as often, I don't know,

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yeah, but you're yes, yeah, I will think of problems for

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a job for my for my daughter
it speaking of late started, she got

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a free period for the the first
class of the day, just for the

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first semester. But um, so, you know, I believe it's both

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day one and day two that she
has the first block free, so she

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does not have to go to school. So she gets to start school at

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ten o'clock in the morning. Wow, which is crazy. Yeah, yeah,

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I wonder it'll be interesting to see
if it has If if she has

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trouble getting going then I mean,
if you start your day doing one thing

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and then you have to switch at
that particular time to sitting in a classroom

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and concentrating, Yeah, that might
be a challenge. We'll see, we'll

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see what she does. Yeah,
she said, maybe I'll exercise, you

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know, maybe I'll go to the
gym, laughing. Right, maybe I'll

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sleep until ten o'clock and then and
then be late, would be my concern.

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Yeah, I see here that our
high school all starts at seven,

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actually starts at seven twenty nine.
Yeah. So, but there's there's this

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thing in New Jersey now where they're
going to the state wants to do a

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pilot program and have a certain number
of schools do a later start, and

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no schools are volunteering, so it
seems to be a possibility that they won't

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be able to get anybody to do
it. I don't know if they can

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force them, but just amongst the
smallish sample of people on Facebook from around

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here, it seems like the parents
are not real excited at the prospect.

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No, because they have to leave
early, the commutant to the city.

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True, so they need to get
their kids. Yeah, I know it

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was. It was never that much
of a problem for us. But we

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live right next door to the school, so we didn't need a lot of

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lead time. They could sleep a
little l I think in the in the

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suburbs where there's commuters parents, because
I know, like when I worked as

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I worked in um the city,
like right in the city, and then

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but I lived in the suburbs,
and the suburbs our school started forty five

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minutes before my job started in teaching, so my son's school started at like

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eight fifteen. Yeah, and then
when I went to work in the city,

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like I drive in and then my
our school started at nine where I

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work. And I know, I
mean the buses, I guess is it

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as they do here because they rotate
the same buses through the three levels of

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schooling. So you have to space
you have to space everything out. Well,

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you're that thunder rolling outside. The
rain is going to come down to.

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Oh well, listeners, if you
hear the rain and thunder, somebody's

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angry about me vicariously three years because
it's driving out here. But you know,

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they have to if they use the
same buses for the high school the

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middle schools and the elementary schools,
they have to space them out enough,

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and so somebody's got to go early
and somebody's got to go late. So

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the elementary schools start a little bit
late. I guess the middle schools get

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bus. But to um, yeah, just raise our tax. Jersey doesn't

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pay enough to tax this. Come
on, Oh my gosh, see our

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discussion of my traumatic tax payment from
last week. Traumatics. We should call

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it a day here so that we
don't have to continue tormenting you with that.

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I have to get that thought.
I have to go get my head in something