During the first three days of school, the middle school has been practicing a new release time of 2:17 p.m. instead of 2:24 p.m.  Students were being dismissed from Period 9 classes at 2:17 p.m. instead of reporting back to homerooms and being dismissed at 2:24 p.m.

The primary reason that the middle school had an afternoon homeroom at the end of the day was to return laptops to storage carts in each homeroom. This schedule was created when all technology devices remained at school. Now that we are 100 percent on a device take-home program, we will utilize this time frame to adjust to our new Middle School access road.

The new access road has added some additional busing time when traveling from the Middle School to the High School each day. To account for this extra time, we will be shifting the time that was used for homeroom to an earlier release time from school.

Effective Aug. 29, Mars Area Middle School release time will be 2:17 PM.  Students will have plenty of time to move from period 9 classes to their lockers and equipment storage areas and proceed to a bus or parent pick-up. This adjustment will be no different than how we practiced and operated on the first three days of school.