Wake won’t start high schools later to let teens sleep in. Here’s why it’s on hold.
Updated with school board approving bell schedules on March 15.
A proposal to shift Wake County high schools to later start times to allow teens to get more sleep is on hold — again.
Last March, Wake County school administrators unveiled three options to change school bell schedules so that high schools could start anywhere from 30 minutes to three hours later than their 7:25 a.m. start time. But administrators said March 1 that work on the plan was put on hold, adding that more discussion is needed before changes can be made.
“There was a hiatus with COVID, but we need to get back on it,” Mark Strickland, Wake’s chief of facilities and operations, told the school board. “What we’d like to do is kind of get academics into the mix, talk about all the things that would affect this decision.”
Under the 2022-23 bell schedules proposed on Tuesday, Wake would retain the standard start times of 7:25 a.m. for high schools, 8:15 a.m. for middle schools and 9:15 am. for elementary schools.
No time changes were proposed to any existing schools. The four new schools opening this summer would fall into the district’s standard time slots.
The board approved the new bell schedules on March 15. Board vice chairman Chris Heagarty was the lone dissenter. He objected to how the new Barton Pond Elementary School will start at 9:15 am when it will draw from schools that start at 8:30 a.m.
Wake’s three-tier bus system
Wake uses a three-tier system in which the same bus makes multiple runs in the morning and afternoon. This reduces the number of buses that are needed.
But Wake’s policy putting high schools on the first tier has drawn complaints for years from teens and their parents. It goes against recommendations from groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics to delay start times for middle schools and high schools to 8:30 a.m. because teenagers have a hard time falling asleep before 11 p.m. the night before.
Some districts have already shifted their schedules to have high schools start later. In 2017, Durham Public Schools flipped its schedules to start elementary schools earlier at 7:45 a.m. and high schools later at 9:15 a.m.
School board member Christine Kushner said asking high school students to get up so early is difficult for them.
“One of the things that also came out of the pandemic is students appreciated being able to sleep in and respond to their biorhythms,” Kushner said.
Later start for high schools?
For years, Wake has talked about looking at changing school start times.
Under the options presented a year ago:
▪ Option 1 would keep the current 3-tier system but shift start times 30, 45 or 60 minutes later.
▪ Option 2 would swap the tier assignments for elementary and high schools. Elementary schools would run from 7:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. and high schools from 9:15 a.m. to 4:10 p.m.
▪ Option 3 would be a combination of the first two options that would start school later and have elementary schools on the first tier and high schools on the third.
This time last year, administrators said adopting any of those options would have major implications on things such as athletics, childcare and after-school jobs for teens. Administrators said extensive discussion would be needed with the community before any change could be made at the earliest for the 2022-23 school year.
A year later, administrators said those discussions with families, school employees and the community still need to occur. Strickland said he could come back with more information to the board in the summer to begin discussing making any changes for the 2023-24 school year.
“There are many things that affect this decision, not just that the older kids might do well sleeping in,” Strickland said. “There also could be effects, both good and bad, for academics, for kids that work after-school, lots of things.”
This story was originally published March 1, 2022 at 5:59 PM with the headline "Wake won’t start high schools later to let teens sleep in. Here’s why it’s on hold.."
