The board of the Grand County School District recently approved later start times for the Grand County High and Middle schools, allowing the schools to go through with plans to reduce time spent in the buildings from seven hours to six, part of an effort to reduce the potential for viral spread inside the schools amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
School administrators backing the plan hope the later start time (but perhaps not the reduced hours) will stick in future years, citing research on the boon to student well-being that schools see when they start the day later.
Middle and high school principals Cari Caylor and Mary Marable, respectively, presented their case to the district board during an Aug. 19 meeting. They said there were public health benefits to derive from reducing the hours during the pandemic, including that it will mean fewer contact hours between students and teachers and fewer students inside each classroom.
There are reportedly more general benefits to derive independent of the pandemic from starting late, as Kyle Dern, the high school therapist, highlighted in an email to the district board.
“At Grand County High School, I think we’re all aware that a large number of our students struggle with attendance, tardiness, performance, and/or mental health,” Dern said in the email. “Numerous studies have shown improvements in all of these areas by delaying the start time of school to better accommodate age-appropriate, biological sleep patterns that are unique to adolescents. Furthermore, I have found zero studies that show decreases in learning outcomes from delaying school start times.”
Dern linked to three studies, including literature from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine that concluded delaying the start times at schools by an hour reduces tardiness, depressive symptoms, daytime sleepiness, and even automobile crash rates. One study showed crashes reduced by 16.5% following changes to the start time of school.
As for the pandemic-specific benefits, classrooms will have fewer students despite shortened hours, providing better ability to spread students out inside classrooms. This is because, whereas most teachers in past years have had a planning period in the middle of the day when they are not teaching, all teachers this year will have the same planning period in the hour the school day starts. Therefore, more classrooms will be open to students during the day because all teachers will be teaching at the same time.
At the middle school, the later start time will eliminate the need for seventh hour classes, which are non-core, topical electives. It will also make up for the reduced space the school has to work with this year as its new building remains under construction, and it will mean students can, for the most part, remain with cohorts throughout the day.
Certain middle school electives like band, choir and strings will not be cut while others, such as theater and creative writing, will.
At the high school, maintaining cohorts is virtually impossible because students’ class schedules depend on what they have already taken and what interests them. Each student will come into the school year at different parts of the core curriculum, and many will elect to take career and technical education classes while others have other focus areas.
In addition to reducing contact hours between students and teachers, core curricula at the high school will also be reduced from three trimesters to two. This means each student will take only two semesters each of English, math, and science this year, so although they will take fewer classes overall, they will have opportunities to take electives.
“We are not cutting any classes or options for students,” Marable said. “Many of our seniors and some juniors are ahead of their number of courses required for graduation. If they choose not to take other courses, that is an option that we will fulfill.”
Marable went on to say that moving back the start time could be good in future years, but they would have to add back that hour to the end of the school day since a shortened day was “not desirable” in the long term.
“Our plan at the high school would be to add the hour back at the end of the day with possible options such as an athletic hour, peer mentoring and work release for our students,” Marable said. “We are hinking ahead so the later time of dismissal wouldn’t impact athletics, activities and the work schedules of many of our students. Of course, this will take some work and serious planning, but this could be beneficial in many of the aspects of a student’s daily life.”
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August 28, 2020 at 04:39AM
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Change the alarm clocks: School bells to ring a bit later as hours are cut - The Times-Independent
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