PEORIA, Ill. — A shortened schedule will continue next fall for Peoria Public Schools.
Students will attend class an additional 30 minutes per day at the start of the 2021-22 school year, with plans to add more time later in the year.
District 150’s Director of Transportation Josh Collins said PPS will stay with a three-tier schedule in the fall so that there are enough bus drivers to get kids to school.
“I’ve been looking at our available resources and things like that. We are just not ready to go back to the way things were pre-pandemic,” Collins said.
Currently, PPS students are in the classroom five and a half hours a day. In the fall, students will attend class six hours a day.
“Once we’ve kind of gotten comfortable with that, we’ll look at how we can push that out another 30 minutes,” Collins said.
PPS’ three-tiered schedule for the 2021-22 school year will begin with high school students attending class from 7:30-1:30, middle school students in the classroom from 8:30-2:30, and primary students in class from 9:30-3:30.
Peoria Public Schools currently employs roughly 68 bus drivers, but would need another 20 drivers to return to the two-tiered schedule that was in place before the pandemic began last year.
