As my kids are reaching junior high age, this would be my 2 cents.
Getting on the bus at 7:10am if just setting them up for failure.
I think having a good teacher makes a world of difference, someone who is interested in a kids challenges and performance milestones over individual assignments can keep the kids engaged, and nothing about grade 5/6/7 if hard enough that any engage person should struggle with it. From my experience, I think class size has nothing to do with the way a teacher engages with kids, but the real problem is when you have a teacher who can hold the kids attention and keep them engage, how do you scale that to the teacher who cannot? I have no answers, but lets start with sending preteens and teens to school at 8:30-9:00 am (I'm talking about when they have to leave their house), instead of 7:00-7:30am, set them up to be more aware and engaged people around the teacher, so that the teacher doesn't need to carry so much of that weight.
*I am very much for a 8:00 am elementary school start, I see no problem with that for the those kids.
edit: bah I can't remember how to do you tube.
https://youtu.be/M4u6oOQ77mg?si=-diJQGnljKMP-uhF