After-school brawls between students at two District high schools have gotten so bad that administrators are changing the high schools’ start and end times, LL has learned.

The changes at McKinley Technology High School and Dunbar High School, set to start on Monday, come after multiple fights between the students in NoMa, including a melee earlier this month at the NoMa Metro station. The end-of-day rush of students from both schools headed to the station has lately meant brawls around the Metro station or the nearby Wendy’s on New York Avenue NE.

Now, D.C. Public Schools administrators plan to create a 20-minute gap between the schools’ end times to keep the groups of rival students from encountering one another. McKinley’s daily end time has been moved back from 3:15 p.m. to 3:05 p.m., while Dunbar students will start their class days 10 minutes later and end at 3:25 p.m.

“Staggered timing will allow a 20-minute gap between dismissals, which will mean fewer students heading to the Metro station at the same time,” DCPS spokeswoman Michelle Lerner writes in an email.

Photo by Aaron Wiener