May 9, 2008
Q: First of all I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for the insight and accommodating the youth in this area by offering a Defensive Driving or Driver’s Education course. This course is in great demand for many of our children who will be leaving the Yokosuka area to attend college this summer/fall. I feel that learning to drive on this base is one of the safer places for these students to learn. I was wondering about the possibility of accommodating these seniors more efficiently. Is there any particular reason that this course is being taught from 3 to 5 p.m. when many of these kids are involved in extra curricular activities such as baseball, softball, soccer and track? These kids started these sports/ activities prior to any registration date for this course. I hate to see the kids start something and not be able to finish. Would it be possible to either move the course back by two weeks so that the sports schedule will be over and still be completed before school is dismissed for the summer? Another alternative would be to change the start time from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.? This not only affects the student but the entire team as well. Your consideration in this matter is greatly appreciated.

A: Thank you for your concern. The schedule for the drivers’ education course was determined by taking a number of factors into consideration. Given the backlog of high school students who were not able to participate in a drivers’ education course for the past two and a half years, we wanted to begin as soon as possible. The idea was to offer one course before school adjourns for the summer, and at least two more over the summer. Another consideration was the schedule of the instructor; he is a teacher at the high school, and drivers’ education is just one of the evolutions he is involved in. Additionally, the school’s academic schedule was taken into account. While we realize that some students would indeed have a conflict because they participate in extracurricular sports/ activities, we also had to consider that beginning the class much later would potentially impact all students - as all students must participate in final examinations at the school. According to the USFJ and CFAY Instructions governing drivers’ education, the students must attend 45 hours of instruction - to include 39 classroom hours. It would indeed be asking a lot of students, anytime during the school year, to attend drivers’ education classes every evening. Therefore, we have tried to limit the classes to no more than three a week and still have the first program finish prior to June; we have had to include some Saturdays as well. As you can see, a lot of thought was put into the schedule for this first drivers’ education class. We knew that we could not accommodate everyone, so we opted for accommodating the most.