Collierville panel votes 3-2 after much study
In a difficult vote, a majority of the Collierville School Board decided Nov. 29 to start school later next year, moving closer in line with start times at the top 10 high schools in Tennessee.
The board voted 3-2 to move Collierville High School from a 7 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. start for the 2019-20 school year following months of study and discussion among students, parents, teachers and administrators. Under the new start time, no child would be picked up before 6:45 a.m. for the school bus. The district’s middle schools will move 15 minutes later to 8:15 a.m., and elementary school children will keep the same 9 a.m. start.
The change, which includes the logistics of adding seven more buses, comes at an estimated cost of more than $400,000.
“A change in start times is worth investing in,” said Collierville parent Dan Osborn, who led a group in support of even later start times. “Our school system is dedicated to following the recom-
of the CDC. Therefore, voting against a later school start time is going against our own school handbook. Any move in the direction of a healthier student body is worth doing.”
In 2014, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that middle school and high school start at 8:30 a.m. or later and that middle schoolers and high schoolers get 8.5 to 9.5 hours of sleep per night. The American Medical Association also recommends an 8:30 a.m. or later start time, and the Centers for Disease Control has said later start times improve adolescent health and academic performance.
The district’s new start times plan falls short of those recommendations, but had unanimous support of a committee of stakeholders that studied the issue for the past six months.
What do start times look like around Tennessee?
The top 10 high schools in Tennessee start later than Collierville High School, and Collierville Schools Chief of Staff Jeff Jones said 7 a.m. differs from the mainstream in the rest of the country.
Only 4 percent of schools in the United States start before 7:30 a.m., he said.
Classes meet from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Central Magnet School in Murfreesboro, Hume Fogg Magnet High School in Nashville; Martin Luther King Jr. Magnet School in Nashville; and Merrol Hyde Magnet School in Hendersonville; according to data presented to the board by a Collierville student Grant Ayres.
At two of the top 10 schools — Brentwood High School and Franklin High School — first period starts at 7:40 a.m. except for most Mondays, which have a later start at 8:25 a.m.
Start times at the other top 10 schools ranged from 7:45 a.m. at Houston High School in Germantown to 9:30 a.m. at L&N STEM Academy in Knoxville.
A wide range of opinions over what time school should start was voiced by Collierville community members, including parent Peggy Bardes who said her children have all been very successful after attending Collierville schools with the early start time. Now, one of her children has a job, which requires a 6 a.m. report time and another at 5 a.m.
“They don’t have a choice to say to their boss, ‘This doesn’t work,’ ” she said.
She said she believes the students will not go to bed earlier, and that the students who want to succeed can “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.”
She pointed out that 30 minutes later isn’t even enough to meet the recommendations of the studies cited by parents who support a later start.
“All their studies say 60 minutes or more,” she said. “I think it’s putting a band-aid on a situation that needs to be explored further.”
Split decision
Voting “yes” to push the Collierville High School start times later were school board members Wright Cox, Wanda Chism and Mark Hansen. The “no” votes came from Kevin Vaughan and Cathy Messerly. Collierville Schools Chief of Staff Jeff Jones said it was the first 3-2 vote the board has made since the district formed five years ago.
He called the split vote a reflection of the divisions on the issue in the community as a whole.
Cox said questions remained for him, but he trusted the work of the committee that recommended 7:30 a.m. He said he still thinks some kids will simply stay up 30 minutes later and that every one of them “is going to go to bed with their cellphone.”
“Dadgummit,” Cox said when called to cast the first vote on whether to start school later. “Still with questions in my mind, I vote yes.”
“With reservations, but still feeling that it’s the right thing for our students, I vote yes,” Chism said.
Messerly said she went back and forth all day on her decision. Before voting no, she said she was concerned the start times would cause student drivers to be in more traffic.
“I think that’s putting them in more danger,” she said.
Before voting no, Vaughan questioned how to determine what kind of return they would see for the $400,000 investment on moving the start times.
“If this thing didn’t cost us any money, there’s no reason in the world not to start it later,” he said. “That’s not the issue to me. So it is about money, and it is about what you get for your money. And I can’t look past the empirical data that I’ve seen in my own home ... I have two young adults now who are gainfully employed, great citizens, did great in college.”
He said his kids felt they were never outmatched in college because of their training at Collierville High School.
“And bless their hearts, they started at 7 a.m,” he said.
In the dark
The fact that some kids are walking to the bus and waiting at stops before sunrise was one of the key concerns board members voiced.
“If I can get the kids off the street at 6 in the morning in the dark to 6:45, it is worth it,” Chism said.
On the morning of Nov. 29, Musa Thomas, a 15year-old freshman at Collierville High School, left his house a little before 6:20 a.m. to walk to his nearby bus stop with dark skies overhead. School starts at 7 a.m. and his first class is math.
Thomas says school should start a little later, like 7:30 a.m., but not 8 a.m.
“I still want to get home around 3,” he said.
His mom, Wuday Thomas, prefers an 8 a.m. start time, but says the 7:30 a.m. time recommended by the committee was a good compromise. She supports having a first period study hall so kids could get more sleep and arrive after 8 a.m. with no penalty for tardiness.
“(There are) good reasons where people want it to stay as is; however, (experts) recommend kids get enough sleep. They recommendations mend they get their vaccinations done and we do that, they recommend healthy eating and we do that as parents — so why not give them the recommended hours for sleep?”