On August 10, 2016 the Carbon Board of Education voted to allow changes in the daily schedules of Helper Middle School, Mont Harmon Middle School and Carbon High School.

Each day, except early out day on Monday, the school day at each campus will start 10 minutes earlier than last year and end 10 minutes later. All bus schedules for students have been worked out to accommodate this change.

On Mondays, the early out day, school will be dismissed at 12:30 p.m. instead of the 1:30 p. m. that was used in previous years. Bus schedules will accommodate this day’s schedule as well, with secondary students riding buses that will arrive at their homes before the elementary students, whose schedules will not change from last year.

On Monday’s the first school bell at Helper will ring at 8:15 a.m.  Classes will begin at 8:19 a.m. with five classes held that will be 41 minutes in length. The rest of the week (Tuesday through Friday) school will also begin at 8:15 a.m. with five periods of 67 minutes each. School will be dismissed at 3:14 p.m.

The first lunch period on Mondays at Helper will start at 10:30 a.m. with the second lunch period beginning at 11:15 a.m. The rest of the week the first lunch period will begin at 11:11 a.m. and 12:22 p.m. for the second lunch period.

At Mont Harmon the first bell on Monday will ring at 8:10 a.m. with classes beginning at 8:14 a.m. On Tuesday through Friday the first bell will also ring at 8:10 a.m. with classes ending at 3:15 p.m. on those days.

On Monday the first lunch at Mont Harmon will take place at 10:25 a.m., second lunch at 10:48 a.m. and third lunch starting at 11:12 a.m. The other days of the week lunch periods will start at 10:48 a.m. for first lunch, 11:28 a.m. for second lunch and 12:08 p.m. for third lunch.

At Carbon High the first bell all week long will be at 8:10 a.m. On Monday classes will be dismissed at 12:30 p.m. During the week (Tuesday-Friday) classes will be dismissed at 3:14 p.m.  Lunch on Monday will start at 11:14 a.m. and during the rest of the week it will start at 12:05 p.m.

The reason for the longer days and Monday early out being set back an hour is so that teachers can have an entire afternoon for collaboration. In the past students had to wait for buses at the secondary schools for at least 1/2 hour after they were dismissed and teachers had to perform bus duty then get to their Professional Learning Community times. This cut into inter-faculty collaboration considerably. Under the new schedule, the buses will be there to pick up students almost right after they are dismissed and faculties can then spend Monday afternoons on productive activities.

“This will give teachers time to really work on collaborative efforts with their peers,” said Carbon School District Superintendent Steve Carlsen. “Because of bus supervision a lot of time for that purpose on Mondays was lost with the old schedules. This way the students still get all their educational hours in a week and the teachers get time to improve what they are doing as well.”

The board also voted to lower the sign up activity fees for football at both middle schools from $90 to $30 for the 2016-17 school year. The change in fees alone would put the schools in a deficit situation with football, so the board is contributing another $3000 to Helper Middle School and $5000 to Mont Harmon Middle School to make up the difference.