Board to study delayed start times

SOUTH COVENTRY » The Owen J. Roberts School Board has approved the creation of a new steering committee that will reignite the discussion over school start times in the district’s middle and high schools.

The board voted unanimously at a recent meeting to form the steering committee “with appropriate task forces to study and provide recommendations for a feasible implementation plan to potentially change the school start time for secondary students to 8:30 a.m.”

The board has not yet released a timeline for establishing a committee or details on how committee members will be selected.

The formation of the steering committee will be based on guidelines set forth in a Pennsylvania’s Joint State Government Commission Report, released in October of last year.

That report, titled “Sleep Deprivation in Adolescents: The Case for Delaying Secondary School Start Times,” recommended that secondary schools start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. It contains an appendix that lays out strategies for districts seeking to change to later start times.

The American Academy of Pediatrics also recommends that secondary schools begin no earlier than 8:30 a.m. Owen J. Roberts High School and Middle School students begin their day at 7:30 a.m., while elementary schools open an hour later.

The board has been grappling for several years with sleep health concerns. Last year, they looked into delaying the opening bell by a halfhour in all schools. While some parents have been pushing hard for that change, many others came out against it.

Those in opposition worried about how a later start and finish to the school day might negatively impact elementary school children, day care, work schedules, sports and traffic, among other things.

In January, the board decided not to move toward a delayed start time for the 2020-21 school year, citing concerns that more work needed to be done to study the overall effects.

The new steering committee is expected to help identify potential impacts and address concerns of all stakeholders.

While the board has formed committees to examine adolescent sleep health concerns in the past, the new steering committee will be different in that it will oversee task forces. Those task forces will represent a variety of school and community stakeholders such as sports groups, office staff, extracurricular clubs, parents and teachers, to name a few.

Each task force will be charged with studying how a revised start time would impact their group, and seek solutions for logistical challenges.

The decision to form the committee came at the recommendation of the board’s pupil services committee earlier this month.

Committee Chairwoman Leslie Proffitt said that new information offered up in the Joint State Government Commission Report provided “more robust” guidelines for districts seeking to adopt later start times. The document’s Appendix A is titled “Guidance for Pennsylvania School Districts Wishing to Explore School Start Time Changes,” and outlines several pages of recommendations.

The report, which totals 91 pages includes an executive summary that refers to sleep deprivation in adolescents as a “public health crisis of epidemic proportions,” noting that it can contribute to “mental, behavioral and physical effects.”

It found that at least 25 school districts across Pennsylvania had moved to later secondary school start times between 2011 and 2019, while another 28 were publicly researching changing start times.

The report also states that an advisory committee to the Joint State Government Commission’s “most salient recommendation is that Pennsylvania’s school districts should consider studying the advisability of changing their secondary school start times to improve the health and welfare of their students.”