Episode 5: Six-Year-Olds At the Bus Stop at 6am and Getting Dismissed at 1:30? We Don't Think So.

We are so excited to have Keri back with us for this week’s episode, and she comes back swinging as the Boston Public Schools finds itself in the midst of a giant parental backlash around changes to start/end times at all of their schools. In an effort to adapt high school start times to the knowledge that older students benefit from starting later, bell times at virtually every school in Boston have changed and it would be an understatement to say that all hell has broken loose. It’s one thing to change start times for elementary students but it’s another thing to change the time by 2 whole hours and expect six year olds to wait for a bus at 6:15 in the dark! Or for parents to figure out what to do with an elementary aged child who would now be dismissed every day at 1:15. Isn’t that basically a “half day”?

Keri has major problems with how the information was rolled out and how, yet again, a school district has missed the boat when it comes to the difference between parent outreach and parent engagement.

In addition to the Boston issue around start and end times (a story that cities across the countries are watching and, undoubtedly, learning from), we also touch on Erika’s latest blog post “Black Women Saved Us. It’s High Time That We, as White Women, Answer the Call Too”. What are we, as white women, doing to empower and raise up our African American counterparts?