October 11, 2022

Unionville-Chadds Ford School Board directors have been talking since May about changing the school start times, and a vote on the matter is scheduled for next week. But now the recommendation from the district administration is to make no changes yet.

The district did change school start times five years ago, moving start times for high school and middle school students to 8 a.m. School Superintendent John Sanville said in the spring that the previous time change was beneficial for students.

“Our kids were sleeping more [after that change], and they were more alert in class. That positive data…led us to a board goal to revisit the topic,” he said at the time, and added that the district would have considered another change sooner, but that was delayed by COVID.

The proposed change that was developed since May would have had those older students starting classes at 9 a.m. But that appears to be on hold, at least for now.

Tim Hoffman, the assistant superintendent, said the district has been discussing the issue with many parents, doing “a lot of problem-solving,” which led to the current recommendation to delay changing the start times, keeping them where they are now.

“After careful consideration, weighing all the feedback, we’ve been receiving, thinking about the challenges that we have faced and continue to face. There are a few issues that we’re still struggling to find great answers for…So, our recommendation is that we make a motion to maintain our current school start and end times,” Hoffman said.

However, he did say the issue of school start times remains important and should be considered, especially on how it affects student performance and mental and emotional well-being.

“This topic has a lot of merit,” Hoffman continued. “There are a lot of mental health outcomes, potential academic outcomes when it comes to our adolescents getting more sleep, safety outcomes. There’s a number of positive outcomes that come from our adolescents getting more sleep.”

However, he continued, the process of listening to all the stakeholders through emails and public conversations, whether they are for or against a change, was valuable, and he added that the district had done a great job informing the community about the importance of sleep and of wherefores and whys of making a change.

But the recommendation remains, wait.

“We believe we should revisit this. What we propose is that we revisit this in the future, looking at start and end times for secondary students in our Ches-Mont League…If our start times become out of alignment with the rest of the league, we certainly should look at that.”

There is also a transportation issue, Hoffman said. The district needs a fully staffed transportation department with enough drivers to handle the turnaround times for getting students to and from school and home and to make sure they can handle after-school transportation if needed.

“Having enough drivers would alleviate some of the missed class time at the end of the day to be able to leave later,” Hoffman said. “If our start times become out of alignment with other Ches-Mont League schools and we’re fully staffed in transportation, we believe that would be the time to revisit.”

He added another possibility, that being if the state would mandate a start time of 8:30 a.m. or later. He said California has already done that and New jersey is talking about.

Hoffman concluded by saying the board should celebrate the process it used to get to this point. But he also said about 35 percent of parents support the idea of making a change now.

An around-the-table discussion followed with directors praising the process and either in tacit approval for waiting or otherwise non-committal on changing the start times.

The discussion came to a close with comments from Sanville.

“When an organization makes a status quo decision, you can be seen as indecisive. You can be seen as dismissive of an issue, you can be seen as not willing to do your due diligence or seen as sticking your head in the sand, or you’re not brave enough to make a decision. Those are all things that happen when organizations make status-quo decisions.

“I think the opposite is absolutely true here. We keep using the word ‘process,’ but that’s what it is. Our admin team put in the work, a tremendous amount of work, our community was engaged, and our mantra of ‘no decisions have been made’ really is true. And I think that we ought to celebrate, as Tim said, the work that was done, what we learned and how we did it, is really a testimonial as to how we do our work.

“I, too, thank everyone sitting around the table, including the board… It’s easy to brush aside, but we didn’t do that…So, next week when we vote on this, we ought to celebrate the status quo.”

The proposed change is for secondary students at CF Patton Middle School and Unionville High School to begin at 9 a.m. and go to 3:43 p.m. Elementary school classes would begin at 8 a.m. and go to 2:30 p.m., except for kindergarten. Morning kindergarten would go from 8-10:35 a.m., and afternoon kindergarten would be from 11:55 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.