Late start for Spokane schools ends Thursday

There will be no late start Thursday for Spokane Public School students. From now on school will start and end at the same time all five days of the week.

The schedule change was negotiated between the Spokane Education Association and the district as part of this year’s teacher contract. The change won’t cost the district any additional money because teachers were already being paid for that time, said spokesman Kevin Morrison.

Thursday late start was implemented about 20 years ago, Morrison said. At the time it was intended to give teachers collaboration time.

“I guess what we were seeing in practice was it really varied school to school, year to year how that collaboration time was being used,” he said.