Advice to Schools: Take it Slow, Listen and Expect the Unexpected

Considering a later start for your high school? It’s likely not going to be a smooth process. But those who took the plunge say there are a variety of steps districts can take to make success more likely and less painful.

Their advice: Take it slow to allow all parties to prepare for change; communicate well to all community members; solicit input from staff, parents, students and the community; and don’t expect your experience to be the same as other schools.

“People are very accustomed to start times,” says Doug Schuch, superintendent of Bedford County Public Schools in Virginia. “You really need to understand your community and to what extent it impacts them.”

Bedford moved, following lengthy deliberation, to a later start time in 2011. Schuch ensured every interested party was involved in the planning, including some who might not come to mind at first — such as business owners who employed students after school.

“Involve your community in a discussion around this and get them to help champion your cause,” he counsels. “If they don’t feel like they’re a part of this decision, getting their support may be problematic.”

Parent Understanding

In Glens Falls, N.Y., district leadership made certain parents understood the rationale behind the move. Sleep experts, including a doctor and academic researchers, came to Glens Falls to talk about adolescent brain development and sleep patterns. The district hosted evening sessions for parents and even created a newsletter specific to the proposed change in school day schedules.

Notably, the district continued to report on the issue publicly after the change was put in place to demonstrate the improved sleep patterns in students (based on surveys) and corresponding improvements in academic performance and student behavior.

Six years after the change, says Glens Falls Superintendent Paul Jenkins, “we don’t get any complaints. Everybody’s used to it.”

Jeffrey Moss, superintendent in Beaufort County, S.C., suggests districts take their time.

“We studied it for a year,” he recalls. “Lessons learned for us: We probably should have done a little bit more education about what we were studying and presented it, through town halls, at each high school. A very good public relations program will educate parents what it looks like and feels like.”

In Beaufort, the modified start times began at one high school as a pilot program before moving it to all seven high schools in the district, drawing on successes at one school to show the benefit of a later start to the school day for teens.

Roadway Realities

In other communities that effected this change, leaders suggest considering every potential impact a later start might create. Every school district is different. Some districts found even a half-hour change would lead to serious traffic burdens — either for buses on local roads or at the schools themselves — that created insurmountable issues. Others found increased cost for new buses and drivers they didn’t expect and knew they could not afford.

“Every community is unique — traffic, layout of district, suburban, urban, rural,” says Ron Thiele, superintendent of Issaquah, Wash., district. “Something like this touches so many families in your community. It needs to be done thoughtfully, and you need to let the community get used to it.”

Judith Owens, an expert on pediatric sleep issues at Harvard, has studied and promoted late starts for years. She stresses the importance of having all parties in the community be on board, from the superintendent and the board of education to all school unions and even community leaders. In some cases, she says, the process to approval can take years. Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia, with 183,000 students, needed 15 years of debate and deliberation to move to a later start for its 27 high schools, she says.

In some states, legislation may make efforts at the district level moot. According to the advocacy group Start Schools Later, bills to make high school start times later have been introduced in at least 11 states: California, Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia and Washington.