Zzzz! U.D. mulls later start times for high schoolers
UPPER DARBY » Upper Darby school administrators and school board members will have a lot to sleep on as they start to investigate delaying the start time for high school students.
A number of potential scenarios were created by a committee of administrators and made public for the first time Tuesday night to push back the start time for secondary education students (high school and/ or middle school). The district’s scenarios for potential delayed start time implementation come three months after the state published its own study making the case for later start times, with a general consensus being 8:30 a.m. to provide adequate sleep for adolescents who generally go to bed later and get up later than younger students.
At present, Upper Darby High School students start their day 7:30 a.m. and middle school students start at 8 a.m.
Assistant Superintendent Ed Marshaleck provided the start times and some costs associated with seven options outlining what may work for the district if they and a delayed start:
Option 1 pushes high school start time back to 8:30 to have four-block days at 83 minutes per block, limiting the number of courses that can be taken to 24 credits. The middle school starts at 8 a.m. with the elementary schools, having their times made earlier to either 8 a.m. or 7:45. This option will have an initial cost of $3.6 million to the district to buy more school buses with a recurring
$3 million cost. Option 2 also has high school starting at 8:30 a.m., but all students will have a first block cyber course that require checking in with that course’s teacher or homeroom teacher. For this, the district would need to buy more Chromebooks and cyber licenses plus
$3.3 million for transportation, or invest $390,000 in curriculum writing. There is no change to elementary and middle school start times.
Option 3 continues the 8:30 a.m. start time at the high school but shrinks the instructional time of the current fiveblock day from 79 minutes to 65. Some $3.3 million in firstyear transportation costs apply. There is no change to elementary and middle school start times.
Option 4 pushes back the high school start time to 8 a.m. and reduces the block instructional time to 71 minutes.
$2.2 million in first-year transportation costs apply. There is no change to elementary and middle school start times.
Option 5 has all current start times pushed back one hour. An initial investment of
$1.1 million would be need for transportation to accommodate bus routes for non-public and charter students the district is responsible to transport.
Option 6 includes high and middle school start times at 8:30, but the district wants to hold off to see how their full facilities plan (new school construction and expansion) comes out.
Option 7 would change nothing.
“There are not recommendations tonight. These are potential options,” Marshaleck emphasized. “If we were to make recommendations this would be the starting point for the work the district would be doing to investigate and thoroughly review this (the state’s) report and the process to follow to implement the recommendations.”
One talking point at Tuesday’s meeting is the coordination of extracurricular activities, child care, and other areas that may be affected by changing school start times.
“There are possible solutions for many of the things you mentioned,” said Marshaleck, responding to board President Ed Brown’s concern in these areas. “It’s a long, interesting
process to make this work. We have to remember that in the end, not everyone is going to be happy with potential outcomes. There is going to be some sacrifice made at some level: Financial, personal or whatever it might be to achieve these goals.”
Board Vice President Rachel Mitchell said the state report addresses a lot of issues on such a move, but didn’t provide many solutions.
Superintendent Dan McGarry complimented the work of the committee to look into these options, and said the district is “cautiously” moving.
“It’s going to be a give and take and we have to be patient about that and give people time to make those changes,” he said. “There are a lot of pros and cons. I appreciate that we take our time and gather this feedback. This impacts everybody differently.”
Compared to area school districts that have implemented later start times (Unionville-Chadds Ford, Radnor) or are actively considering them (Lower Merion), Upper Darby is notably the largest of by student enrollment and also the most dense. District officials said each school district
is different and conforming to later start times cannot generally be implemented to all others.
“We have to be smart when we execute this and share this out publicly that we’re not going to be ‘chasing’ after anybody or comparing ourselves to everybody else,” said McGarry. “We are not making any decisions tonight. We’re doing our due diligence as administration to the board and the public that the sleep study was published and we want to show that we are at least looking into and can potentially do.
“We have miles to go before we sleep.”
Bypassing the 2020-21 school year, there was no time frame established as to when one of the options, if any, may be implemented.
There was no public comment on this matter at the meeting, but the district is soliciting feedback on the sleep study and the district’s options at sleepstudy@upperdarbysd. org.
The district has planned three community forums on the topic on Feb. 13 at 7 p.m., March 6 at 10 a.m. and March 31 at 3:30 p.m., all hosted at the high school.