District moves staggered bell times decision to next year

A decision to implement controversial staggered bell times at School District 22 will not take place until next year.

The Board of Education voted to table the decision to the following year at their meeting on Wednesday.

The change would of bumped the start time for high school students by 30 minutes.

In April, CUPE members and support staff spoke out against the proposal arguing that staggered bell times would mean lost jobs in transportation.

A survey was put out by the district to gain public feedback, but it was subject to scrutiny with many saying that staggered bell times should of never been included in the transportation survey, given the impacts on teachers, support staff, parents and students.

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Kelli Sullivan, a parent, stood before the board on Wednesday to ask them to disregard the results of the survey distributed in April.

A woman asks the school board to disregard data from the staggered bell times survey . She says the survey was misleading and not good survey design #VernonBC pic.twitter.com/VLoGxHg6AL

— Tiffany Goodwein (@misstiff_94) May 16, 2019

“The two question survey sent to parents dated April 25 violated two very important principles in survey design; that it be free of bias and that it not be misleading in anyway,” said Sullivan.

“The survey is very certainly designed to make respondents believe that a 9 a.m. start time at the secondary level of our district will have overly positive benefits,” she added.

The scrutiny of the first survey prompted the district to issue a second survey in May.

The results were revealed this week.

According to the survey 49.08 % voted in favor of staggered bell times.

Parents were the most supportive of the proposal with 57.01 per cent indicating their support.

Support staff, in contrast, were the least supportive out of all the members polled with only 18.37 per cent voting in favor.

A total of 1428 people participated in the second survey.