A group of York County parents say they won’t stop speaking at School Board meetings until the school division pushes back school start times for high school students.
“Do we have to wait until a life is lost to make a change?” asked Kathleen Howe, one of the parents.
“They’re getting up for school around 5:15 to 5:30,” Howe said of her 16- and 18-year-old daughters. “It would be equivalent to an adult who works a 9-to-5 job going in at 4:30 a.m. and expecting them to be productive all day.”
“My youngest one doesn’t even speak to anyone in the morning,” she added.
Howe believes the early start times are unsafe, not just bad for academics. York County’s 7:20 a.m. start time means kids commute to school in the dark for much of the school year and drive to school tired, she said.
A study of Virginia Department of Transportation crash data from teenagers in two counties with early and late start times, Chesterfield County and Henrico County, respectively, found a higher occurrence of accidents in the hour before and two hours after school in the division with earlier start times. The study found that early-start teens were often involved in the type of crash commonly associated with losing consciousness behind the wheel.
A study from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, “Schools that have a start time of 8:30 a.m. or later allow adolescent students the opportunity to get the recommended amount of sleep on school nights: about 8.5 to 9.5 hours.” Teenagers who don’t get enough sleep upset their natural biology, putting them at risk for not only bad grades, but other associated health risks like obesity, the report says.
An American Pediatric Academy report says teenagers’ sleep cycles typically don’t kick in until around 11 p.m., so having to get up at 5 a.m. leaves them an hour and a half short of sleep each night.
About eight speakers gave public comment about the early start times during the School Board’s meeting on Monday. They told the board about groggy students falling into holes while walking by the roadside in the early morning darkness and kids turning to caffeinated drinks to get through the morning.
This isn’t the first time the parents have been there, nor will it be the last, Howe said, adding she and the others would keep coming back to School Board meetings until the start times have changed.
That’s not a simple proposition. Chesterfield County Schools proposed a change to their start times this year, which after months of planning comes with a $7.3 million initial price tag, an additional cost of $2.7 million annually and won’t be fully implemented for another 18 months.
Those dollar figures mostly correspond to purchases of new buses and the annual cost of the gas to run them. While nothing has been decided in York County yet, discussions between the board and administration are focusing on “cost neutral” options.
The board has had school start times on the back burner for years. In 2013, they came up with a few rough ideas, flipping the start times between elementary, middle and high schools and pushing start times back roughly half an hour.
But a lot has changed since 2013, including the elementary school start time, and the board is going back to the drawing board. They discussed their options at a May 9 work session.
“I think this decision could be one of the most important decisions that I make on this board, that this board makes,” said board member Cindy Kirschke. She voiced a strong desire to return the schools to a start time of 8 a.m., if not later.
The board floated a few ideas and decided to draft a survey for parents, staff and students after an undefined fact-finding period to gauge public opinion.
Bell can be reached by phone at 757-746-6333.
