Hickory Dickory Dock
To which I’ll add, a big reason school districts stagger start times by level (elementary; middle; secondary) is bus rotation. But as the author notes, our friend Science shows that younger kids bear early start times better than older kids. On top of that, parents of younger kids bear early start times much better than they bear late start times. You have to accompany your early-grader to the bus and wait with the precious angel. You also have to get to work.
In Montgomery County, Maryland, the elementary schools start at 9:15, which means buses are still picking kids up at 9. So working parents either seriously delay the start of their day or pay extra for before-care. Being able to do without before-care will be worth in the neighborhood of $50 a week.
Meanwhile, the upper grades start at 7:50. These kids are old enough that they could get themselves to the bus stop or building, but they’re leaving at a time when a lot of parents are still around anyway. If elementary school started at 7:50 it would save a lot of parents money and time, and if middle and high school started at 9:15 it would save a lot of students concentration.
Via Hit & Run.
Comment by John —
January 15, 2008 @ 12:39 am
7:50? MCPS has gone soft since my days. We started school at 7:25 when I was in high school (94-98). So they’re apparently moving in the right direction.
Comment by First Little Pig —
January 15, 2008 @ 9:48 am
[nanny] But for parts of the year the wee ones will be going to school in the dark! [/nanny]
And as far as I can tell the whole “daylight slavings” nonsense is largely so that the wee ones will not have to go to school in the dark.
Comment by mds —
January 15, 2008 @ 10:44 am
How did we ever make it through most of the Twentieth Century with longer schooldays and children walking themselves(*) to the bus-stop / school? I mean, sure, the longer they’re away from their parents, the greater the already-high chance of terrorists kidnapping them, but still.
(*)Yes, uphill both ways through eight feet of snow. Now get off my lawn.
Comment by Cala —
January 15, 2008 @ 11:14 am
One worry isn’t just that the kids will get kidnapped by terrorists, but that if school is canceled e.g. due to snow, the little kids won’t have anywhere to go because the schools rightly don’t assume that there are adults home during the day.
Making the little kids get up earlier makes more sense, except that that means they’ll also have an earlier release time, which just shifts the day care burden.
Comment by Khadjair —
January 15, 2008 @ 2:04 pm
Actually, to be honest, one of the big pushes for high schools to have early start times has nothing to do with academia, and eveyrhtign to do with sports. The little hole-in-the-country school district I went to started classes at 8:10/9 am for high school/elementary students, meaning they ended the school ay at 2:30/3:15.
The kicker is what comes after. Sports practices started at 2:45 and ran to 6 or so. Being a backwater district with an entirely rural character, bus service covered most of the district students (none of this “drive the kids to school” stuff when school is 15-20 miles away), and often subject to snow delays in the winter. A proposal was made to slide the start times forward by 30 minutes for high school students, 15 minutes for elementary school students, to allow county plows to get a chance at the worst roads.
The community uproar around this was intense, and centered almost entirely on how it would affect the sports program. It shouldn’t have been a surprise – when the voters voted down the school budget one year, community activists in an economically depressed area (the major city in the area had declined in population by 20% from 1975-1985, and has apparently continues to decline another 30% since then, and regional true unemployment (not simply current job-seekers) hovers around 15%) managed to assemble enough money through donations to provide the funding for the sports program for the year.
Comment by Fraud Guy —
January 16, 2008 @ 12:34 am
I had heard of (and experienced) the late rising phenomenon, and would gladly have welcomed an extra hour of sleep.
Could this also help gridlock, by allowing commuters to better stagger their start and travel times?