In the town notorious for minimal drama or conflict, it seems we can no longer miraculously have our cake and eat it too. The school start time debate began as all debates do, with people trying their hardest to not believe in science. Eventually the administration caved and decided that maybe teenagers “need sleep,” but unfortunately, there remains the age old argument of “what teenager needs sleep when you can sleep in a concussion induced coma caused by making sure we have a football team.” It makes sense though, we should preserve our football team, which has had a prolific career and a legacy in almost winning. Nevertheless, it’s important to recognize that you’ve failed as a leader if you don’t make every single individual person happy, so the school board proposed a concise plan including approximately 700 different times that we could start our day. My personal favorite was 7:46; that extra minute will surely make up for the 4 extra hours I was awake not prioritizing my time well enough! A close second was starting school at 5pm and just turning our entire town into a vibrant and diverse clan of vampires. Details on the budget for that one to come.

I, personally (not to insert my own opinion or anything), was shocked to find that one of the solutions regarding the conflict with bus schedules wasn’t relinquishing control of the Finland of RSU 21, Arundel. Everyone who lives there could own a pet unicorn and no one would know the difference, mostly because I’ve never actually seen any evidence suggesting that Arundel exists. Getting rid of the dead weight that is “Arundel” (essentially South Dakota for all I care) would allow us to actually have a bus schedule that doesn’t force students to show up to class at about 1:30 on Wednesdays. On top of this, for the bus drivers, we could begrudgingly “pay” a person to do a job, which may be a hard transition for this school district, but I think we can pull it off. The argument of busses is certainly compelling, though I doubt anyone making the decisions around here has been outside of Maine, because double decker busses are, like, everywhere. Middle and high schoolers sit inside, and elementary schoolers sit on the top layer. “Shouldn’t the older people be in the unsupervised part?” you ask, definitely still reading this hack job of an article. To that I say: absolutely not. What better way to teach survival of the fittest? If we still have the leftover budget from pretending the arts don’t exist, we could even throw in a conch shell and a wild boar on each bus and make things really interesting. Details on the budget for that one to come.

One of the biggest arguments against changing the school start time is that after school activities would be less accessible. For this, there’s yet another simple solution. I’m sure the theatre kids would be more than willing to share their bunk beds and fountain of youth they have hidden under the stage waiting for tech week. Either way, I just wish there was some way for there to be a select number of buses that come later in the day with the sole purpose of getting kids who want to stay after school home. I guess we can’t have everything. I’m of the understanding that some sports would potentially be cut because of lack of access to pool time, or a wide open field with fake hills to hit a ball really far, or even just a field with a lamp or something in the corner. Maybe that could be solved by trusting that teenagers have good enough eyes to see outside at 4pm and maybe not cutting the sports altogether.

Maybe we could even try cutting the lack of understanding, willingness to try, or maybe, just maybe, cutting the chronic need to make promises we simply can’t keep. Details on the budget for that one to come. We know the district isn’t made of money, we see the three eras of architectural design lazily plastered along the mile long, brick facade of our school. We see the contrast between the plans you showed us and the plans you actually delivered -Unless the performing arts center is hiding in a discreet location we aren’t allowed to know about. Probably in Arundel. At the end of the day money will drive this decision, and any attempt to please everyone will result in the white mom mafia, localized to RSU 21, rampaging through town with nothing to defend themselves but a passive aggressive tone and minion memes from 2011. The Arundel moms might even want my head too for all this vicious libel. I could always just let it roll over to the next mistake I make, then maybe they’ll forget all about this one.