Board considering new start time due to bus conflict.
By: Lea Kahn
A proposal to start the school day at 7:30 a.m. for Lawrence High School students next year drew fire from parents at the Lawrence Township Board of Education meeting last week.
School district officials, meanwhile, said they have not decided whether to start classes 30 minutes earlier at the high school. They plan to contact parents before making a decision. The high school starts at 8 a.m. now.
Gerri Hutner, president of the Lawrence High School Parent Teacher Organization, told the school board at its April 9 meeting that she believed that starting school at 7:30 a.m. would be detrimental to the high school students. Research has shown that as hormones change, teenagers’ sleep cycles change and they sleep later, she said.
Ms. Hutner, who is a former school board president, also criticized school district officials for failing to inform the public including the high school PTO of the proposal to change school starting times. No one has had any substantial information on it, "except for the rumor mill," she said.
The proposal to begin Lawrence High School at 7:30 a.m. grew out of plans to lengthen the school day at the four grades K-3 schools. The school board’s contract with the Lawrence Township Education Association calls for adding 10 minutes to the school day this school year and 10 minutes more next year.
The school day for the K-3 schools Slackwood Elementary School, Lawrenceville Elementary School, Ben Franklin Elementary School and the Eldridge Park School started at 8:10 a.m. for the 2001-02 school year.
This year, the K-3 schools start at 8 a.m. The starting time at the high school has remained unchanged at 8 a.m., for the last school year and the current school year. School district officials are pondering the starting times for next year.
A change in starting times at the K-3 schools may affect the school bus routes next year, Schools Superintendent Max Riley said. The same school bus that drops off high school students turns around and transports the younger students, he said.
While adding 10 minutes to the school day for the current school year did not impact the busing schedule, that may not be the case next year, Dr. Riley said. The principals of the four elementary schools are studying how to add 10 minutes to the school day for 2003-04, and they have indicated that it may affect the busing schedule, he said.
"Adding the first 10 minutes was easy," Dr. Riley said. "Adding the second 10 minutes will be harder. It will start to impact the starting and ending times and the school bus routes. The bus schedule is tight. The same bus that picks up high school students drops them off and then goes back for the (younger) students."
School buses pick up students at Lawrence Middle School and Lawrence High School and then drop them off at the two neighboring schools around 7:30 a.m., said Thomas Eldridge, school business administrator and school board secretary.
The school buses leave the Princeton Pike campus and pick up the K-3 students and deliver them to school by 8 a.m., Mr. Eldridge said. Then, the school buses pick up students in grades 4-6 and take them to the Lawrence Intermediate School, which begins at 8:30 a.m.
Children in grades K-6 who live more than one mile from school are bused to their respective schools, Mr. Eldridge said. Students in grades 7-12 are bused if they live more than a mile-and-a-half from school.
The school district saves money by using the same school buses to transport the younger students and the older students, Dr. Riley said. The option is to run two fleets of school buses, but that would cost more money, he said.
But Ms. Hutner, the high school PTO president, said she was concerned about the proposal to start classes 30 minutes earlier.
"There is no evidence that ‘earlier is better,’" Ms. Hutner said. "Actually, evidence points to just the opposite that later times are better, and that as hormones change, teenagers’ sleep cycles change, causing a shift to later sleep patterns.
"I realize that with students working after school, plus athletics and extra-curricular activities, it is nearly impossible to have the school day go later than 3 p.m., but starting at 8 a.m. works," she said. "I believe that starting school at 7:30 a.m. is detrimental to their learning as well as their health."
Ms. Hutner said she understands the need to be careful in spending money on transportation, but the school district budget should not be balanced on the backs of high school students.
"If money needs to be saved on transportation, then you need to go back and sharpen your pencils to find a way to do this without hurting students and without asking them to get up even earlier," she said.
The average school bus trip is 30 minutes, she said. High schoolers who travel from Washington Township spend even more time on the school bus, she said, adding that the school board should re-evaluate the proposal to start school at 7:30 a.m.
Ms. Hutner also was critical of the "total lack of communication" and information about the proposed changes to the high school starting times. The students and parents of high school students were not informed of the proposal, she said.
"As president of the PTO at the high school, I received no notification of this at all," she said. "I attended Direct Link meetings, where the PTOs gather with the superintendent, and do not recall such a conversation. I venture to say that if you did actually tell people what you are doing, there might be more people here to talk about this issue."
School board President Mary DiMartino said the change in school starting times is "an on-going discussion." She said the administration would reach out to parents and also seek comment from the community before a final decision is made later in the current school year.
Dr. Riley said he expected that the issue would be on the agenda for the school board’s May 14 meeting for discussion. It is a difficult problem, he said, adding that it would be easy to solve by spending more money.

