Hempfield Area School District’s students may get home earlier next academic year.
The school board will vote next week on whether to make an adjustment to the district’s current arrival and dismissal schedule. The adjustment would place the high school and middle school students on the same schedule — shifting the middle school day to start and end about an hour earlier.
The elementary schedule would start and end about a half-hour earlier. High school students would remain largely unaffected — starting school 10 minutes later and leaving 15 minutes earlier.
The move is meant to get the elementary school students home earlier, said Superintendent Mark Holtzman.
“Due to the nearly 100 square miles of our community, it is challenging to get (some of) those (elementary) children home before 5 p.m.” Holtzman said, “and we would love to do that a little better and maybe have an opportunity to get them home 15 minutes or so earlier.”
The school district educates students from Hempfield, Adamsburg, Hunker, Manor, New Stanton and Youngwood — a 95-square-mile territory, according to the district’s website. It has nine schools — five elementary schools, two middle schools, a ninth grade building and a high school.
The high school day runs from 7:20 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. Middle school starts at 8:30 a.m. and ends at 3:20 p.m., and elementary school starts at 9 a.m. and dismisses at 3:40 p.m.
If the revised schedule is approved, middle and high school students would start at 7:30 a.m. and dismiss at 2:30 p.m. Elementary students would start at 8:30 a.m. and dismiss at 3:20 p.m.
District administrators first discussed making a change to the school day schedule in January, said board President Jerry Radebaugh.
“I’ve definitely seen it in my own life with my own children that they get home kind of later, and I know that our students get home a little bit later than neighboring districts,” said Radebaugh, a parent to three Hempfield Area graduates and a current middle school student.
“Whenever the administration first presented it to us, we definitely listened and heard them out,” he said, “and I think that their recommendation is the obvious right thing and the choice to move forward to try to get those kids home a lot earlier.”
The district’s students are driven to and from school by about 60 to 70 DMJ Transportation buses, Holtzman said.
“We have enough drivers,” he said. “We just don’t have a surplus.”
The new schedule, if approved, would come with trial and error, Holtzman said.
“It’s kind of an experiment,” he said, “because even though we have plans and we hope that we’re going to meet those time slots, it just depends on the traffic and the flow of things.”
The Hempfield Area School Board will vote on the 2025-2026 school schedule at 7 p.m. April 21 in the Hempfield Area Administration Building, located at 4347 Route 136.