Collierville committee recommends 7:30 a.m. start time for high school
Collierville high schoolers might have 30 more minutes of sleep coming in their futures and middle school students might have 15 more, if officials implement the newly released recommendations of a committee that has studied school start times for months.
The proposed change to 7:30 a.m. for high school and 8:15 a.m. for middle school would cost more than $400,000 a year and fall short of medical guidelines that advise school start at 8:30 a.m. or later. However, Collierville Schools Chief of Staff Jeff Jones said the proposal has broad support from parents, students and teachers, and would result
in more sleep for students and reduced ride times on buses and have minimal impact on after-school activities.
No buses would pick up high school students before 6:45 a.m., he said.
The presentation of the committee’s report on Thursday night moved the school board closer to a vote on whether to change start times for the 2019-2020 school year.
The committee began meeting in April, and the board plans to vote at its next meeting later this month.
“This experience has been an eyeopening one, a growth opportunity for all that were involved,” Jones said. “When we embarked upon this study I think many of us underestimated the scope of the task.”
The committee looked at six scenarios.
❚ No change. High school starts at 7 a.m., middle school starts at 8, and elementary school starts at 9.
❚ Keep the current start time, but allow students to choose first period as a study hall. Students would have to provide their own transportation to arrive late.
❚ High school students could select their start and dismissal time: 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. or 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
❚ Middle and high school starts at 7:45 a.m. and dismisses at 2:45 p.m., while elementary school meets from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. This option would cost more than $1 million.
❚ Elementary school meets from 7:45 a.m. to 2:45 p.m., while high school and middle school meets from 8:45 a.m. to 3:45 p.m.
❚ High school meets from 7:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., middle school meets from 8:15 a.m. to 3:15 p.m., and elementary school meets from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The committee’s work included research on adolescent sleep, scholarly publications, surveys, reviews of best practices in other states and presentations by experts.
Obstacles to changing start times include increased transportation costs, extracurricular scheduling conflicts, traffic congestion, after-school care issues, and family and home life stress, Jones said.
The current 7 a.m. start time at Collierville High School is out of the mainstream for the state and the country, Jones said, noting that only 4 percent of schools in the United States start before 7:30 a.m., and of the 10 highest ranked Tennessee schools in 2018, none started before 7:40 a.m.
“The 7 a.m. start time at Collierville High School is too early and needs to change,” Jones said in presenting the committee’s findings. “This view is evidenced by the feedback of the majority of parents, students and employees.”
Several parents who supported starting high school after 8 a.m. attended Thursday night’s meeting.
“All in all, the committee did an excellent job,” said parent Dan Osborn. “It was a long haul, a long study.”
Osborn’s group recommended a later start time for high school of 8:20 a.m. and supported having a study hall option for first period.
“Clearly the committee en masse accepts the data, accepts the situation, but we were hoping if we’re going to make the change, let’s make it an impactful change so you can really see the benefits of it,” he said.
While Thursday’s proposal was for an earlier start time than Osborn’s group suggested, he said it was encouraging that no child would be picked up for the bus before 6:45 a.m. The group also hoped that an outside logistics expert from the community would be consulted about the transportation aspect of the start time plans.
The board plans to vote on the matter Nov. 29.