Elementary schools, Pulaski Street school will have later start and end times this year

The Riverhead Central School District’s elementary schools and Pulaski Street Intermediate school are set to start and end later in the day this school year in an effort to improve the efficiency of the district’s transportation department. The changes have some parents upset about disruptions they will cause to childcare arrangements.

The changes align the schedules of all the K-4 elementary schools so they start at 9:25 a.m. and end at 3:40 p.m.. That start-time is 45 minutes for later for students at Roanoke Avenue Elementary School. Pulaski Street school will start at 8:30 a.m. — 30 minutes later — and end at 2:45 p.m — 15 minutes later. There are no changes to the high school or middle school schedules.

The bell schedules for each school building starting in September are as follows:

• Roanoke Avenue Elementary School: 9:25 a.m.-3:40 p.m. (changed from 8:40 a.m.-3 p.m.)
• Aquebogue Elementary School: 9:25 a.m.-3:40 p.m. (changed from 9:05 a.m.-3:30 p.m.)
• Riley Avenue Elementary School: 9:25 a.m.-3:40 p.m. (changed from 9:05 a.m.-3:30 p.m.)
• Phillips Avenue Elementary School: 9:25 a.m.-3:40 p.m. (changed from 9:10 a.m.-3:30 p.m.)
• Pulaski Intermediate School: 8:30 a.m.-2:45 p.m. (changed from 8 a.m.-2:29 p.m.)
• Riverhead High School: 7:15 a.m.-2:01 p.m. (unchanged from last year)
• Riverhead Middle School: 8 a.m.-2:40 p.m. (unchanged from last year)

Some parents say the changes in the start and end times, also known as the district’s “bell schedule,” have not been properly communicated, and that significant changes to the schedule of Roanoke Avenue Elementary School in particular could disrupt them and their children’s schedules.

The Board of Education approved the changes to the bell schedule on May 23 at the recommendation of Transpar, a transportation consultant hired by the district last year to analyze the district’s transportation efficiency, and again earlier this year to make recommendations for managing its bus routes. The district’s contracts with Transpar totaled more than $360,000.

A redesign of the bus routing network and bell-time changes and alignment was necessary if the district wanted to increase its transportation efficiency, the consultants said during a presentation in January. The transportation department was also significantly understaffed, while additional bus runs were added as the population of the district’s school-age students increased.

All of the elementary schools are in the third tier of bus runs, after transportation runs for Pulaski, middle school and high school. Aligning the schedules will allow district transportation to “address some of the challenges with the time between tiers in the afternoon and all performance of buses,” Transpar’s Micah Brassfield said during the May 23 school board meeting.

According to a schedule on Transpar’s May presentation, the consultants were still working on refining bus routes for the new school year.

Superintendent Augustine Tornatore said in a statement sent through the district’s public relations firm that the pick-up and drop-off times will be adjusted to the new schedule. 

“The principals will be sending out letters about the new bell schedule and the SCOPE before and after school program to families in the next week,” Tornatore wrote. “Further busing information will be distributed to families as well by the transportation department over the course of the next week and a half.”

On June 2, the week after the school board meeting where Transpar gave its presentation, the district posted a letter on its website concerning “transportation and schedule updates” with the new school hours. 

“After a thorough evaluation of our District’s transportation department and procedures, it was concluded that a redevelopment of bus routes and school hours would resolve many of the issues we faced this year, including the busing delays many parents had indicated had become problematic,” the letter said. “The changes we will be introducing next school year will greatly enhance the efficiency, safety, quality and reliability of transportation for all students eligible to receive District transportation services.”

The letter also says that before- and after-school childcare is available at the elementary school’s and Pulaski Street through SCOPE. A flier on how parents can register for the before- and after-school SCOPE programs was attached to the post. The deadline to register for SCOPE childcare for the upcoming school year has now passed. The district also posted information about other local childcare facilities.

In response to a request for comment, Tornatore said the district this year started offering full before- and after-school care programs operated by SCOPE at each elementary school to help parents and guardians with their possible scheduling conflicts.

There is also a survey posted on the district’s ParentSquare portal soliciting input from parents about their child care needs. The survey is open until Aug. 14.

In interviews, parents criticized the lack of direct communication with parents about the schedule change. They said they only found out the news through word of mouth, and did not robocalls, letters, emails or notes sent home with their children to notify them of the change. The June letter posted on the district’s website was not posted on social media. 

“Nobody was aware of it,” Roanoke Parent Teachers Organization President Paul Petterson said. 

The changes are most significant to Roanoke Avenue Elementary School, which will start 45 minutes later and end 40 minutes later than last year. 

“I have friends and other parents that I talk to that absolutely love it,” Petterson said, but others “are scrambling for child care.”

Petterson said he heard about the change through word of mouth. Without an official statement from the district, he said, some parents are unsure about whether the new bell schedule is the real thing or just a rumor.  

“It’s going to come with the school papers in August. Everyone’s going to find out two weeks before school starts that, especially for us Roanoke families, school’s going to be starting like an hour later than they used to — so good luck to you if you work,” Katheryn Cooke-Michel, a Roanoke parent, said.

Cooke-Michel is currently not working, but has been looking for work for when the school year starts. “The biggest problem for me is now cutting an hour into the morning on the K-4 end,” she said. “My middle schooler is going to be getting home an hour [before] at least. So it does mess with the amount of hours that I will have available to try and find some part-time work while my boys are in school. “

The school day ending later also has the potential of disrupting the schedule of children’s after-school routine, including homework, extracurricular activities and dinner, Cooke-Michel said.

One parent, who spoke on the condition anonymity because she is an employee of the district, said the change in the start and end times will disrupt her childcare arrangements. Both she and her husband work full-time and rely on family members to watch her kids, she said. Administrators suggested she use SCOPE.

“I’m like, ‘Do you guys understand how much SCOPE actually costs per child?,’” she said. “And most families have more than one child in our district. It’s disgusting. And why should we have to pay money for something that we don’t even want? We want our kids to be home or out of school doing their activities that they want to do.”

The SCOPE before-school program starts at 7 a.m. until start of the school day; the after school program runs from dismissal until 6:30p.m., according to the district website. The tuition for a single child who attends the SCOPE program every day both before and after school is $609.19 per month, plus an annual non-refundable registration fee of $40 ($60 per family.)

“The school SCOPE program is not cheap. It’s very expensive,” he said. “Personally, I wish the SCOPE program was cheaper, because we have a bunch of low-income families in the area. I don’t know how they’re going to afford it. It’s a lot of question marks.”

It is unclear whether extracurricular programs pursued by Riverhead students outside of those offered by the school district were notified about the new bell schedule. 

“It’s going to be really, really challenging this year,” the same parent said. “And really I’m so sad for my children and I’m so sad for all the teachers in the building that have had this schedule and have been doing it for how many years, and nobody was told about it or communicated this information.”

Petterson said the Roanoke PTO was not consulted on the schedule change. A survey for parents to give their feedback on a new bell structure was a part of the proposal submitted by  Transpar to the district in response to a request for proposal, but no survey was ever distributed publicly.

Tornatore did not respond to a question posed about why a survey was never distributed to parents, nor to a question as to why there wasn’t more communication with parents about the schedule change.

The superintendent also did not respond to a request for details about how the bell-time changes will increase the efficiency of the transportation department. No final report from Transpar has yet been released to the public.

“I wish this works out for everybody in the end and I’m just keeping my fingers crossed,” Petterson said.