Beaufort County School District considering slight changes to school start times

Beaufort County school district superintendent Jeff Moss said Wednesday it’s too early to determine if last year’s change in school start times was successful and that start times will remain the same unless the Beaufort County Board of Education decides otherwise.

In 2016, the district moved its start times an hour later for middle and high school students, but 45 minutes earlier for elementary school students, which has frustrated some parents.

The school board is currently considering a change to elementary schools’ start time, possibly pushing it back by about 15 minutes. But the board has said it is looking to Moss for direction.

“We can’t draw any academic conclusions based on just one year of data,” Moss wrote in an emailed statement that was sent through district spokesman Jim Foster, who said Moss was unavailable to speak by phone Wednesday.

When the board considered changing school start times last spring, Moss pointed some skeptical board members to the success of the Hilton Head Island school cluster, which piloted the school start time change and was, at that time, in its second year.

This means last year Moss was pushing for the district-wide change based on about a year and a half of data, along with a host of research that shows adolescents perform better academically with more sleep. This year, he seems less eager to deem the change a success, instead saying the transition went “pretty smoothly.”

“Comments from middle and high school families have largely been favorable,” he wrote. “Some elementary school families have expressed concerns, but others like the new start times, and our elementary-level principals say their experiences have been positive.”

His remarks understate how divided some of the district has become since flipping the elementary schools’ later start time with the high schools’.

Connie Pratt, mother to a child enrolled in Hilton Head Island School for the Creative Arts, said it has “pitted” parents of elementary school students against parents of middle and high school students.

Another parent, Chris Donelson, created a petition on Change.org to revert back to the old schedule after seeing how tired his second-grade son was. Donelson has about 500 signatures.

“They’re falling asleep in their Cocoa Puffs,” he told The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette last winter.

To counter Donelson’s petition, Hilton Head Island High School students created their own, one in support of keeping the times as is. About 800 of the school’s 1,300 students signed the petition, three of the school’s students said at the most recent board meeting.

Several high school teachers and principals have also spoken at public meetings about improved student behavior and academic performance.

But the district cannot accommodate a later start time for all schools due to busing, traffic and cost-related issues, leading Pratt to conclude, “It is clearly us vs. them. And they have sold the little kids out for sure.”

At the request of the school board, the district is exploring ways to push the 7:45 start time for elementary schools a little bit later. But when — and if — the adjustment will be made is unknown. The lack of finality in next year’s school schedule is at odds with the urgency of last year’s decision to change start times.

Last year, the board approved changing start times at a March board meeting in a 10-1 vote. Prior to the vote, three board members — Joseph Dunkle, David Striebinger and Michael Rivers — called for delaying a decision to the next board meeting in order to receive more parental input. But waiting three weeks until the next board meeting would affect the district’s planning, Moss told them at that meeting. Bus times needed to be finalized and school agendas had to be sent to printers in April.

It’s unclear why the vote on school start times was pushed through last spring to allow enough planning time for the following year when this coming year’s schedule will be potentially under consideration this summer.

“Parents like to know well in advance what their next school year is going to be like,” Moss said in 2016.

That likely won’t be the case for this coming school year.

At the most recent board meeting, board member Evva Anderson, chairwoman of the Student Services Committee, said the committee is expecting to hear suggestions for elementary school schedules from Moss sometime this summer.

Slight tweaks to the schedule may not sound like a big deal to some. For Pratt and her family, it is.

If the elementary school start times are pushed back to at least 8 a.m., her daughter will continue attending Hilton Head Island School for the Creative Arts. If the start times remain at 7:45, Pratt said she is pulling her daughter out of public school.

This story was originally published May 31, 2017 at 5:58 PM with the headline "Beaufort County School District considering slight changes to school start times."