Olivia Flaherty-Lovy, Editor-in-Chief
@ofl_courant
For the past few years, the New Canaan Public Schools system has been investigating changing school start times in response to alarming reports on the effects of sleep deprivation on students. However, any change will affect not only students, but bus drivers, families, teachers, and everyone in between, which is why the process to determine if change is appropriate is so intricate and complex.
Believe it or not, this isn’t the first time the New Canaan administration has responded to a push from the public to move start times later. In 2006, the League of Women Voters of New Canaan conducted a study on the connection between adolescent sleep needs and school start times, intended to highlight the reasoning behind why later start times would be beneficial to student health and performance in school. Though the district chose not to make any changes to school start times, over 10 years later the Board of Education has reopened the debate.
For Superintendent Dr. Bryan Luizzi, the process started a couple of years ago by attending conferences about the relationship between adolescent sleep, health and school start times everywhere from Hartford, Connecticut to Washington DC. New Canaan then partnered with Hanover Research to conduct research and a survey about the potential effects of this change and with Transportation Advisory Services to create four possible busing options for different school start times, which Dr. Luizzi presented to the Board of Education this fall. Since then, two more possible scenarios have been added. “One of the new proposals is to start the elementary schools earliest, followed by the high school and then Saxe,” said Dr. Luizzi. “The other is to have the high school start first at 8 AM, and the elementaries would go after that at, say, 8:45, with Saxe starting at around 9:30.”
One of the biggest factors in determining if a change in start times is reasonable is transportation- specifically, bus schedules. Currently, the district operates on a three-tiered bus system, using 33 buses to transport about 4,200 students to or from school across all five schools. “Every bus we add costs about $100,000,” said Dr. Luizzi. “We spend $3.2 million a year on the current 3-tier bus system and any change that adds additional buses will increase the cost.”
Another challenge that comes with shifting school start times is the fact that it would affect the commutes of the faculty. “Coming from Fairfield, where I live, if you get on the road any time past 6:30 you can double your commute time,” said English teacher Matthew Quinn. “So later start times would require teachers who are coming from the north to try and grind their way through even more traffic to try to get here and the same thing on the way home.”
In November, Orchestra teacher Leo Ficks proposed the creation of a subcommittee that would work with Dr. Luizzi and Principal William Egan to ensure that the faculty voice was heard in the debate. “I think the later start time itself is a good idea, but it occured to me that to really look at this completely the faculty needs to have some input,” Mr. Ficks said. “The goal of the committee is to make sure that we cover as many areas of this as we can so we make the right decision.”
New Canaan isn’t the only town in Fairfield County to consider shifting their start times, though. In 2003, Wilton flipped the start times of its elementary schools with those of its middle and high school so that the elementaries start at 7:35 and the middle and high school begin at 8:15. More recently, in 2017 the Greenwich Public School District moved the high school start time from 7:30 to 8:30 AM and the middle school start time from 7:45 to 8 AM. “Generally the feedback has been that they feel making the change has been better for the students,” said Dr. Luizzi, who has been in contact with Superintendents of districts whose districts have made changes to their start times. “It’s been more positive than negative, but we have to understand that it’s a complex decision to make.”
Due to the immense amount of research and consideration that must be taken into account, according to Dr. Luizzi the earliest that any change could be implemented would be the 2020-2021 school year. “There are so many things to weigh, so the goal is for the Board to give us some direction by June,” he said.
In the coming months, Dr. Luizzi hopes to continue to move the process forward by surveying students, parents and faculty to determine the potential effects of a change. “It’s one of my goals to have as inclusive a process as we can,” he said. “Schools exist in a whole ecosystem and if you make a change in one area everything has to adapt.”
