Start Time Move Support Builds

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By Bill Slocum
Contributing Editor

A petition calling on the Board of Education to move public-school start times closer to 8:30 a.m. has gained some 1,400 signatures in less than two weeks, in what supporters call a demonstration of the initiative’s townwide popularity.

Petition-drive leader Valerie Erde, a Riverside mother with a sophomore at Greenwich High School, says she does not expect the move will take place next year. But she says it is time for the Greenwich Board of Education and Superintendent William S. McKersie to declare their positions on the matter.

“Everyone from the American Academy of Pediatrics on has said getting up at six is bad for teens,” she said. “Certain board members have gotten it before. Others are kind of unclear. They say ‘I believe the science, but…’ If you do believe the science, we don’t understand why you aren’t going forward.”

McKersie said a decision to proceed or not on moving start times forward will likely be made next June, after the completion of a transportation study expected in March. He also said he accepts the research on the matter presented by proponents (“The science is loud and clear”), but that logistics concern him.

“Great ideas can be implemented badly,” McKersie said. “If we do it in Greenwich, we have to implement this very well.” Moving forward after a decision, he adds, could take from 12 to 18 months.

That would make for a close fit with the September 2017 timeframe the petition advocates. Petition advocates say they understand the argument that start-time changes will take time to implement, but want a clearer expression of will from the Board of Education.

“It’s going to take time, there are a lot of issues to resolve,” noted Wheatleigh Dunham, an Old Greenwich father of three children in the school system. “But other communities are doing it. There’s no reason we can’t do it, too.”

In addition to the petition’s success, advocates point to other developments. Last week, Seattle, Wash., became the largest school district in the country to move their public-school start times to after 8:30 a.m. for high school and middle school students. At a Board of Education meeting last week, First Selectman Peter Tesei spoke out for a similar change in Greenwich.

“He’s saying we need to do the right thing for the kids,” Dunham says.

Erde and others say they wish the Board of Education members would weigh in, too. Some have; during the recent election all board candidates said they favored changing start times, some more forcefully than others. Others who didn’t run this year have less clear positions, including the new chair, Democrat Laura Erickson.

“Many of us have come to feel with the board that the will is not there on behalf of many people, at least not yet,” Erde says. “That slows things down. If all eight board members said: ‘Let’s get this done,’ they would get it done.”

One concern expressed in the past has been what would happen with elementary-school start times under a new program. Jim Healy, a Riverside father of two in the school system, says “no school should start before eight in the morning,” adding that the focus is on high school and middle schools starting after 8:30.

With one son of his at Eastern Middle School and the other at Greenwich High, Healy said he has seen the need for children to sleep later as they get older.

“For teenagers, it’s hard to fall asleep before 11 p.m.,” he said. “Then, if you do the arithmetic, eight and a half hours later it’s 7:30 in the morning. Now, school starts at 7:30 at the high school.” The result, he said, “literally engineers a sleep deficit for our kids.”

McKersie acknowledges the concern, expressed both by parents and by the petition: “We cannot run the district on a petition, but it is critical to consider,” he said. “The petition does provide evidence for their case, both qualitatively and quantitatively. It makes a difference.”

 

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