Farrell: Later start times great for students, but how about input from parents?

Have you heard the one about the Beaufort County Board of Education and Beaufort County School District Superintendent Jeff Moss?

It goes like this:

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

Parents’ feedback on school start times!

(Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, silence)

Knock, knock? Hello?

I didn’t say it was a funny joke.

I do find it fitting for the moment, though.

Nearly two years ago, the Hilton Head Island school cluster modified its start times so that high school students would begin school nearly an hour later, middle school students would start 10 minutes later and elementary school students would begin 10 minutes earlier.

On Tuesday night, the school board voted to make the change county-wide for the 2016-17 school year, moving middle and high school students’ start times from around 7:30 a.m. to around 9 a.m., and elementary school students’ start times from around 8:30 a.m. to around 8 a.m.

Hilton Head schools’ start times will remain the same.

The board voted to do this because it is well-documented how beneficial later start times are to teens.

They need their sleep, and this has been shown to help them in their studies and keep them safe behind the wheel.

Hilton Head High School has reported successes in achievement, most notably an increase in students on the honor roll and a significant decrease in tardiness and sick days.

The county-wide move is also consistent with a 2014 recommendation from the American Academy of Pediatrics that middle and high school students get more sleep and a national trend to move back start times in response.

By all accounts and on paper, it’s a solid change and a bold move by both Moss and the board.

But the school board approved this change without running it by you first, without hearing your voice.

You were given no chance to tell your representative how this might affect your family. You were given no chance to ask the board questions on pertinent concerns like, say, cost.

In 2014, when the Hilton Head Island schools changed their start times, Moss said the worst-case scenario was that the change could require nine new buses, a cost of $400,000 to the district.

Well, did that happen? And what’s the worst-case scenario we’re looking at now that the change is county-wide? These are two questions you did not get to ask before the decision was made.

The board voted on this change Tuesday despite hearing from fellow school board members Joseph Dunkle, David Striebinger and Michael Rivers that they should delay the vote until their next meeting on April 5 so that their constituents could have an opportunity to weigh in, an opportunity the public had not yet been explicitly given by the board.

No presentation on the change was given during Tuesday’s meeting. In fact, it wasn’t even clear to all school board members what the change represented in terms of new start times — key information for them to have.

And while Moss has presented the idea at town halls since this past fall and at student advisory committee meetings to great approval and there was a general sense among the board that this change had been brought up before, there was limited warning to the majority of parents that this change was afoot.

“Warning” meaning via the school board’s agendas, the announcement of what they plan to talk about on your behalf and the commonly accepted means of communication on public action to the public.

The first school board agenda that the school start time change appeared on was the Curriculum and Instruction Committee agenda from March 8. The change was discussed, according to some school board members and Moss, in the joint CIC-board meeting March 3. But it was only in breakout groups and not in all of them. That agenda included only two items: the penny sales tax and discussion of a four-day school week.

Geri Kinton brought the change up in the March 1 school board meeting in new business, but this was not something itemized on the agenda for the public to see, and minutes from that meeting were approved only Tuesday.

Unless you went to the meeting or watched it later, you would not have known.

The school start time change appeared on Tuesday’s agenda on what’s called a “consent agenda.” According to Robert’s Rules of Order, a consent agenda should be reserved for “noncontroversial items that can be disposed of quickly.”

Consent agendas are voted on without discussion, so Dunkle moved to have the item removed from that agenda so the board could talk about the merits of delaying a vote on it.

He supports the measure, he said, but simply wanted the people in his district to have a chance to be heard.

The board decided against the delay 3-8, because, as school board member Paul Roth put it, the “bus had left the station” on this.

Moss and some school board members indicated that time was of the essence because parents need to know about the change and the school district needs time to plan it.

Regardless of the school board’s intent to be efficient and to do what they saw as a good thing for students and teachers, they once again forgot to take a step back and look at things from the perspective of those they represent.

And ultimately it comes off as a lack of respect for the parents who are affected by their decisions.

This story was originally published March 16, 2016 at 5:14 PM with the headline "Farrell: Later start times great for students, but how about input from parents?."