[justinlink]

To answer some of the questions posed to this comment, I really think the problem is many school districts do not have enough buses and drivers to transport their entire student body at the same time.

By having secondary start first, you require 50% less buses.

If we were to switch secondary goes second and primary age students go first, your primary age children would leave for school around 7am and arrive home at 3pm. Most parents are not home at 3pm and this causes a large problem for families. In some instances, the older children who are in secondary schools -- watch the younger children until parents get home.

[prawn]

Why not ditch the buses and just start everyone around the same time? In Australia, all levels are starting around 8:45am (3-18yo). There's a bit of flexibility in that a school yard is monitored a bit earlier, or the first session is free play ("Investigation") which allows children to be dropped off sequentially if parents are handling that. Ends up being a window of about 8:35-8:55 so my school run can get two both schools in time.

There is affordable and easy to book out of school hours care for anything earlier or later.

Outside of formal lessons, I'd fill gaps with investigative play, extracurricular at-school sport, or casual activities to line up various year levels.