Board Approves 6:20AM Bus Stop Times for Pinellas County Middle School Kids

The day started out with a 9AM kickoff on a chauffer driven limousine bus tour of the district, with each of the school board members riding on the Mercedes luxury coaches with a professional chauffeur guidng them on a school hopping morning culminating in a catered lunch.  The district hired seven Mercedes limos, one for each school board member and a few of the PCS administrative staff on a morning dubbed "Pinellas Together", a whirlwind tour of the district through the dashboard of the seven refreshment stocked party limos.

The day ended with the school board voting and approving have some middle schoolers hit the bus stop as early as 6:20AM (with a December 2023 projected sunrise as late as 7:21AM), citing finances as the primary catalyst to grouping the middle schoolers on the same bus as high school students heading to shared campus facilities like East Lake Middle School which is connected to East Lake High School.  Also, school bus stops will be consolidated, so school bus stops may be several blocks away from 2022-2023 school bus stop locations and mixed with both high school and middle school kids sharing the bus stop and bus before dawn.  Board Member Carol Cook proposed parents need to supervise the age integrated bus stops in rotation with neighbors.

The 6:20AM pickup time was approved by the Pinellas County School Board unanimously.

This past school year, 15 year old Ethan Weiser was killed crossing a road to his Pinellas County School Bus stop on Bellair Road in Pinellas County at 6:40AM.  The sophomore was struck by a car with Weiser's family attributing the darkness as a contributing factor to the tragedy.  The Pinellas County School District says the bus stop meets state standards.  Now, Pinellas is going to put hundreds of younger kids on the roads as pedestrians even earlier for budgetary reasons.  

An image Ethan Weiser's uncle provided to Pinellas County Officials show how dark it was at the hour Weiser was killed.

Here's a list of all the schools in Pinellas County slated to start before the American Adacemy of Pediatrics and CDC's recommended earliest start time of 8:30AM.

The Florida legislature was in a race to preempt the early start times with a State mandated earliest start time of 8:30AM, but the new Florida State-wide legislation is not scheduled to take effect until 2026.  Bill sponsor John Temple, R-Wildwood, said the bill’s 2026 deadline would allow time for districts to prepare for the changes.  Under the bill, middle schools would begin the “instructional day” no earlier than 8 a.m., while high schools would be barred from starting the school day before 8:30 a.m.

For now, middle school kids will be making their way to the unlit bus stops for the 2023-2024 before the sun rises.  Here's hoping they come up with a safer plan for these kids before the schedules are finalized in July.