RAEFORD — SandHoke Early College is planning to implement a minor schedule change starting next year.
At the Hoke County Schools Board of Education’s Jan. 13 meeting, the board was presented with a revision to the SandHoke Early College schedule, which will move the start time from 8:30 a.m. to 9 a.m. with an end time at 4 p.m.
“That adjustment maintains the integrity of the early college program, it better supports our students, transportation considerations and family needs,” said Assistant Superintendent Dawn Ramseur.
According to Ramseur, the district sought community feedback on the change last year but decided to not move forward with the change until next year.
“We started thinking of this plan of adjusting our school day last year largely because of some feedback we were getting from our staff, our students, and so some ideas that we had was looking for ways to align what we’re doing at SandHoke Early College with the community college,” said SandHoke Early College Principal Leslie Neal.
The change essentially adjusts how students arrive to the early college and is mostly a change to the district’s overall transportation schedule.
“What we have now is that students come to us from home and then they catch a bus from SandHoke to the main campus at Pinehurst,” Neal said. “The change would facilitate students being picked up from their homes and then taken directly to the Pinehurst campus.”
According to Neal, the change would not affect anything on the student’s end in terms of instructional time.
“This just eliminates that gap of time on our end,” Neal said. “So their classes would still start at 9 o’clock, as they do now.”
While the schedule change adjusts the start time, it will not alter the end time for school so as to not impact many student’s afterschool activities.
“We’re gonna have to stick with the 4 o’clock schedule in response to some parent feedback and some student feedback, which was geared toward their participation with Hoke County High School athletics,” Neal said.
The Hoke County Schools Board of Education will next meet Feb. 10.
