TACOMA, Wash. — Tacoma Public Schools will shift its bell times for the 2024-25 school year after the district made adjustments to its bus routes.
The district said it shared the changes with families April 14.
High schools are expected to start 30 minutes later, and middle schools are expected to start 35 minutes earlier. Some elementary schools will start 20 minutes earlier. However, the district said elementary start times won’t be determined until May.
Below are the new start times for Tacoma schools for next school year:
- High schools: 8:05 a.m. to 2:35 p.m.
- Middle schools: 7:40 a.m. to 2:10 p.m.
- Elementary schools: 8:40 a.m. to 3:10 p.m. or 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
The district said the adjusted bell times are due to transportation changes to bus route schedules. The district said it needed a more efficient system, prompting it to reduce the number of bus routes.
Compared to a cohort of 20 other Washington state schools, Tacoma spent about $3,078 per rider in 2021-22 – the most of any other school in the cohort. The districts with the lowest cost per rider all used a tier start time model.
The current bus bottleneck is with elementary students, according to Cary Campen, Tacoma Public Schools director of strategic financial operations. In winter 2024, there were 1,672 elementary students who rode the bus in the morning and 2,017 elementary students who rode the bus in the afternoon, creating challenges when all those students started and ended class at the same time.
“This tiering will allow us to kind of do a little bit of a leapfrog approach to making sure that we get all the students there without having to have all buses at one place at one time,” Campen said during an April 11 school board meeting.
With a reconfigured bus schedule, the district projected earlier in April that it could cut 13 routes contracted to First Student.
The changes are expected to save about $1 million in transportation costs annually.