FIRST DAY BACK
STUDENTS RETURN TO SCHOOL ACROSS COUNTY
Five-year-old Evan and his best friend, Thomas, ran back and forth in the gymnasium at Signal Mountain’s Nolan Elementary.
The kindergartners were visibly excited, even as Evan’s mom, Jehana Kearney, tried to calm the boys down.
She asked them to stop running and sit down. She had been through this before with her older child, a third grader, who was also once a new kindergartner.
But for Jessica Stanley, it was the first time.
Her oldest daughter, Lucy, started school Wednesday. Since Nolan’s new kindergarten begins school over the course of two days, both Jessica and Lucy Stanley were anxious because most of Lucy’s friends wouldn’t be at school until Thursday.
Asked if she was nervous, Lucy shook her head “no,” but as the boys and girls lined up and their kindergarten teachers led them away, her face turned red and she started to cry.
While some children cry, the parents always cry more, said Rebecca Cox, a kindergarten teacher at the school.
Thousands of public school students returned to class Wednesday in Hamilton County, with more than 44,000 showing up for class at 74 schools. They rode more than 230 buses or arrived by foot and by car, ready for a new school year.
On Signal Mountain, three schools started the year with later start times for the 2019-20 school year.
The middle/high school’s first bell was pushed back from 7:15 to 7:45 a.m. this year, and Nolan now starts 10 minutes later at 8:55 a.m.
Despite new start times, most Nolan parents said they didn’t really notice a difference.
Mary Harless said her daughter, 8-year-old Anna Claire, was waiting outside, ready to go well before 8 a.m. Wednesday morning. But she said the time change might make a difference later in the year.
Michelle Shelton, the mother of Anna Claire’s best friend, 7-year-old Becca, said she likes the schedule change.
“It works out better for me,” she said. “Because I work … and it’s easier for me with the kids getting home later in the afternoon.”
The girls, both going into second grade, said they didn’t notice the change. They were more excited about starting a new school year in the same class with their best friend, and reuniting with their other friends.
The start time changes were announced in May thanks to “community interest in later start times at Brainerd High and Signal Mountain Middle/High,” said Tim Hensley, spokesman for the school district, at the time.
“Addressing changes at the two high schools resulted in minor adjustments at other schools because of connections related to bus transportation and school program schedules,” Hensley previously said.
School start times on Signal Mountain have been an ongoing topic of debate among parents and community members and were a hot-button issue when the town of Signal Mountain was considering breaking away from the Hamilton County school district in 2017.
But middle and high school students on Signal Mountain might not notice a big difference, and students at East Ridge Middle, where the start time actually moved up a few minutes, definitely won’t. For Nolan students, starting the day close to 9 a.m. is ideal.
Research shows that adolescents and teenagers do better in school when they are able to sleep in.
In 2014, the American Academy of Pediatrics reported insufficient sleep in adolescents as an important public health issue that significantly affects their health, safety and academic success, and began recommending an ideal start time.
That same year, though, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 93% of high schools and 83% of middle schools in the U.S. started before 8:30 a.m.
Sumithra Balaji, who recently moved from Tampa, Florida, to Signal Mountain, said she was surprised by the start times. In Hillsborough County, her middle school student typically went to school later in the day,
On Wednesday, Balaji and her son, 9-year-old Pranav, who will be starting fourth grade at Nolan, arrived almost an hour before class began because they had just dropped off her oldest child at the middle school.
Balaji said the times didn’t really matter because she isn’t working and is able to take her sons to school. She and her husband specifically moved to the mountain when they relocated to Chattanooga because of the schools, she said.
They had explored private school options because of concerns about the quality of Hamilton County’s schools.
“When we moved here we were under the notion that the schools were not great, so we decided to look into private schools,” Balaji said. “We heard that these schools [Nolan] were some of the best in the county.”
Attracting parents who have historically fled the school district with non-traditional and innovative options is one of the current focuses of Superintendent Bryan Johnson’s administration.
New magnet school Howard Connect Academy, which opened its doors Wednesday, is an example of the type of schools and choices that the district wants to give families, said Jill Levine, chief of innovation and choice for the district.
But for new kindergartners who are watching their parents wave goodbye on their first day of school, start time and choices don’t matter in the moment.
With their new shoes and fresh haircuts, bows tied just so and lunch boxes in hand, the new boys and girls fidgeted with excitement as they were led to their classrooms Monday. Some with tears in their eyes waved goodbye to their parents, and some walked confidently into the new school year.
“We are so excited that you are here,” Principal Ashley Wilson said. “It’s going to be an amazing day and an amazing year.”
Contact Meghan Mangrum at mmangrum@timesfreepress.com or 423-757- 6592. Follow her on Twitter @memangrum.