Beginning on Aug. 22,a change was made so that all LISD school classes would begin and end five minutes earlier than the previous schedule. High schools now starts at 8:10 a.m., and ends at 3:25 p.m.

The schedule change was made to give a 30 minute gap between the start and end of the elementary, middle, and high school day so buses could run their rounds quicker and more efficiently.

“It’s just [the district] trying to get the buses a chance to pick up and deliver kids in a timely fashion so that students aren’t waiting around to be picked up in the afternoon,” principal Scot Finch said. “But also in the morning, they’re being picked up in a timely manner so they can get to school on time and can get to class when school starts.”

While this was the intent of the schedule change, the outcome was not what the district had aimed for.

“After we had set those 30 minutes between high school and middle school, we figured out that the elementaries weren’t having school long enough during the day,” Finch said. “[Elementary schools] added 15 minutes to the back end of the schedule so there are no longer 30 minutes between the elementary school and the high school.”

Because the elementary schools have added time, this affects the time of the buses arrival to each school. Now, instead of receiving 30 minutes to deliver students from each school, only 15 minutes are given. A bus runs the elementary route, then the high school route and finally the middle school route, and with the limited time they have now, it appears that the buses will have issues arriving on time.

“We get out 25 after, it’s going to take them more than 15 minutes to run [the elementary] routes and take them home,” Finch said. “It causes [the buses] to come late to our campus in the afternoon and students are left standing around waiting for buses. Sometimes it’s as late as forty minutes until we get out.”

Even with the issues that have occurred with the introduction of the new schedule change, the district has no plans of returning to the original schedule. They intend to maintain and work with what they’ve started.

“In the past six years, 90-95% of the buses would be here on campus when the bell rung for us to get out,” Finch said. “I’ve been having discussions with my superiors and let’s see what happens.”