School Delays Waste Money and Education

Morning darkness cause school delays

• The hour before sunrise is the coldest time of the day. Sunrise prompts temperatures to rise causing fog to dissipate and ice to melt.
• School districts in Indiana’s Eastern Time Zone have excessive numbers of two-hour school delays.

School delays waste millions of education dollars each year

• A conservative cost of teachers’ salaries is $7 per student per hour.
• On delay days, teachers are paid while classrooms are empty and students are waiting at home for travel to become safe. This equates to wasted education dollars.
• In 2013-2014 alone, $101,000,000 budgeted by Eastern Time school districts for classroom education was wasted by school delays.

Quality and quantity of learning is severely compromised on delay days.

• Most teachers consider “delay days” lost educationally: schedules are rearranged, class periods are shortened, and students have difficulty focusing.
• More students are absent on delay days than on full-length days.
• Whether absent or just not focused, according to many teachers, students require a repeat of class content following a delay day.
• Unlike two-hour delay days, school cancellations are considered cost-neutral both financially and educationally because cancellations are rescheduled.

On Central Time school delays could be restricted to 1-hour delays

• This would cut the amount of money wasted and lost classroom time in half.
• Several Indiana schools districts are calling for 3-hour delays and extending the day by one hour so that they can reduce the amount of lost classroom instruction to 2 hours.
• On Central Time it could be possible to restrict delays to only one hour and extend the school day by one hour, thus eliminating all lost classroom time. Students would still be delivered home before dark.

School delays have a significant financial cost to businesses and employees.

• Children at home on a school delay-day need supervision causing parents to cancel appointments or business meetings and deadlines to be missed or delayed. This costs someone.
• Often working parents have to miss work – either partly or all day – without pay.