Puyallup School District Changes Class Times For Next Fall

PUYALLUP, WA — The Puyallup School Board has approved a new plan to change bell times across the entire school district, starting when classes return in fall.

The district says the board designed the new schedule to help ease several ongoing transportation woes. The board says the new schedule should cut the number of late buses, improve transportation for school programs and increase hours for bus drivers. They also claim it will save the district roughly $441,000 each year without any layoffs or reductions.

District leaders say it's been tough making the buses run on time lately, and hope the new schedule will make it easier.

“We have been struggling with the current schedule for years. There are days when we have to pull a rabbit out of our hat to cover routes that are left unfilled due to lack of substitutes," said Assistant Superintendent of Business Services Corine Pennington.

The schedules have been reworked on a school-by-school basis, but follow some general guidelines:

• Most elementary schools will see a change of 15 minutes or less. Four out of the 23 will see greater changes.
• Most junior high changes are 15 minutes are less.
• High schools will start 20 to 25 minutes later than they did before.

A full schedule from the school district can be found below:

It is still unclear exactly when in-person classes will resume in the fall, but when classes do come back the district will immediately begin using the new schedule.