Changing School Start Times: Fayette County, Kentucky

1 Changing School Start Times: Fayette county , Kentucky53 Schools 32,000 StudentsBefore: High School -7:30 amAfter: Elementary School -7:30/8:00 am, High School -8:30 am, Middle School -9:00 amSummaryFayette county , while eventually successful in achiev-ing the late Start , took one of the most difficultapproaches to getting it adopted. They also eventuallysaw great results from their change, but because of thehigh emotional and political nature of the process forachieving the change, there were very vocal opponentsfor a long time after the change as well. ProfileFayette county , Kentucky is a large suburban districtthat houses over 32,000 students and five high confronted the issue of School Start times when itsschool board decided to make the high School starteven earlier. The resistance to this change initiated atwo-year battle between parents to convince the schoolboard of their position on Start times.

2 Finally, the boardwas convinced to delay the Start by one hour, andFayette experienced positive results. Fayette operateson a 4-tier bus system, with elementary schools splitinto two groups. Challenge Fayette county was one of the first to take on theissue of later School Start times. While the sleep fieldhad already proven that learning was impaired by sleepdeprivation and that later starts would benefit students,there was little direct evidence of the success of such achange. Therefore, little but the heated emotions of theparticipants backed the discussion that took place. Thischaotic and passionate approach to the problem wasone of their biggest challenges. Of course, Fayette county faced other, more tangiblechallenges. These included transportation scheduling,limited time for extra-curriculars and after- School jobs,and childcare for younger students. The most vocalopponents to the late Start were the parents of youngerchildren who would lose their supervision after School .

3 Champions There was a small, but very vocal group of parentswho noticed the School board s plan to shift the highschool to an earlier Start , and were not at all group, armed with some of the biological researchon sleep and learning, confronted the School board andremained the party which advocated for later starts overthe next two years. They were, however, unorganizedand had little involvement in the issue other thanattending School board meetings to voice their opinions. Journey As the result of the addition of a new Magnet schoolto the Fayette county Public Schools, the School boardin 1996 was forced to reconsider the bus they announced the plan to shift the high schoolstart times to 7:15 am, 15 minutes earlierthan the pre-vious Start time , a small group of parents was group took their concerns to the next School boardmeeting, where they presented some of the researchshowing that this was exactly the wrong direction to begoing.

4 The board was sympathetic to these arguments,and decided to revisit the whole issue of schedulingschool Start times, and to do some research of their own. Then, without consulting any of the other stakehold-ers, the board too quickly announced their new plan toshift the high School to a delayed Start . There was furious opposition to this pronouncement. Coaches, students and parents involved in any sport in town wereconcerned that they would lose practice time and space. continuedThe National Sleep FoundationAdolescent Sleep InitiativeA much larger group of parents than the original group came out against the change, mostly because of the difficulties they would then face finding childcare fortheir younger children. What the School board and theoriginal protestors had not realized was that everythingin the community revolved around the School schedule,and many people were concerned about this change!

5 Unfortunately, due to previous bad decisions andsecretive dealings by the School board, the people ofFayette county were already suspicious of this did not help in the process over School Start the next year and a half, the School board switchedits position on the Start times at every single parents in Fayette , unfortunately, approached theissue mostly from an emotional standpoint, and the twosides were never able to engage in a rational dialogueabout the possible outcomes. There were no pollstaken, no committees formed, no consultation with principals or teachers. They were also tackling this issueso early that they did not benefit from much of theresearch which has since been published to support the change and to reassure those opposed that the negative effects are minimal. Eventually, at one meeting, the principal of one of thehigh schools attended to present his point of view onthe issue.

6 He had polled his students and found thatthey were split evenly on whether they even wanted thechange. This principal argued that if the students them-selves weren t clamoring for the change there was noreason to make it. In addition, this principal argued thatfrom his knowledge of teens, they would just abuse theextra time anyway and stay up later. One parent whowas advocating for the later Start also happened to be ascientist whose interests were in the area of sleep. Hesuggested, in response to this principal, that no matterwhat decision was made, many people were going tobe unhappy. But if they did make the change, theyshould be sure to collect data both before and after sothey could get a better understanding of how this reallyworked. The superintendent , the board made its decision, mostly becauseof exhaustion with the process. They decided to delaystart times for the adolescents, both middle and highschool.

7 And that parent who had spoken up did implement a research project to study the impact of thelate county s final decision was a advocates of a later Start wanted all students to ben-efit. Although younger students can handle an early startfrom a biological standpoint, the logistics of getting theyoungsters to School early were not appealing. But the School Board s final plan was a flip between the elementary and high schools. The Start times are now asfollows: 7:30/8:00 am for elementary, 8:30 am for highschool, and 9:00 am for middle most important aspect of Fayette county s imple-mentation plan was time . The decision to make thechange occurred fully 10 months before the implemen-tation was to occur. This was essential, because every-one had plenty of time to make arrangements for thenew schedule. Of course there were a few bugs the firstfew days and weeks of the change, especially with thebuses, but overall the transition was extremely made the necessary adjustments and moved onwith their lives.

8 ResultsNow, seven years after the change, you would have ahard time getting Fayette county to go back. Everyonehas adjusted to the different routines, and the studentsand parents appreciate the more healthy approach toeducation. The results of the studies that were done both beforeand after the change were encouraging. Students inevery grade from 6-12 averaged more sleep in the yearafter the change, up to 50 extra minutes in the 12thgrade. The percent of high School students getting atleast eight hours of sleep per night went from 21%-51%.This study also looked at the rate of traffic accidents inthe School system before and after the change to a laterstart. While the statewide rate of crashes increased 8%over the two years after the change, Fayette County, which was previously one of the counties with the highest crash rates, reduced its crashes by over 15%. NATIONAL SLEEP FOUNDATIONW aking America to the Importance of Sleep 2005 National Sleep Foundation