Professional development and common planning time for teachers have emerged as the most critical issues that must be addressed to give teachers time to improve their instruction, review and discuss student work, and ensure successful redesign in our high schools. Teachers can't simply schedule a meeting or professional development time, because their time during the day is spent in the classroom with students.

While the traditional district and campus staff development days provide regular days for training, AISD must explore new ways of delivering staff development that provides on-going support for teachers, sharing of best practices, and built-in time for assessing effectiveness of the training and implementation.

One way to provide this critical professional development time for teachers is to allow campuses to delay class start times for an hour on selected dates over the academic year. These "Late Start Days" have been successful in districts around the country because they create time to improve teaching and learning without taking teachers out of the classroom.

After assessing a Late Start pilot conducted at Anderson and Akins high schools in Spring 2007, the AISD Board of Trustees approved eleven "Late Start Days" for all AISD high schools in the 2007-08 school year.

Parents with additional questions should contact the principal at their high school.