Board delays action on start, end times

The Shawano School Board put the brakes Monday night on a committee recommendation to delay the start of school by 30 minutes for the 2015-16 school year.

The postponement was requested by the ad-hoc committee that has spent six months looking into school start times to see whether changes were needed. The committee received a number of comments on the recommended changes since they were presented to the board March 2.

“There were some pretty interesting things brought up, and quite honestly, a few things we think we missed,” said Tyler Schmidt, School Board president and ad-hoc committee member.

Under the committee recommendation, school would start at 8 a.m., instead of 7:30 a.m., for high school and middle school students, and the elementary schools would start at 8:45 a.m., instead of 8:15 a.m.

The committee also recommended keeping two separate bus runs before and after school. Having all the schools start at the same time would require an additional six buses and would increase annual transportation costs by about $200,000.

To get more public input, the committee plans to hold a community forum April 16.

One of the issues discussed Monday was how the proposed change would affect local parochial schools and day care centers.

Joan Urban, director of St. James Childcare Center, said her program would lose high school employees who help care for children in the late afternoon. To accommodate the change, Urban would have to overhaul when her programs start and when she served snacks and meals.

“We would have to change a lot of things to accommodate the change in times,” Urban said. “It also means that if our school at St. James were to start at its normal time, that means our little ones would be riding with high school and middle school students, which isn’t real appealing.”

Dr. Mindy Frimodig, a member of the ad-hoc committee, pointed out that much of the motivation behind the change was to help high school and middle school students. Research done by the committee showed that once children reach adolescence, they typically fall asleep around 11 p.m. and wake up around 8 a.m.

“The early middle school and high school start times are not healthy,” Frimodig said. “It’s not their natural sleep cycle, and you can’t just say ‘Go to bed’ at 9 o’clock. Their first two hours, they’re in a fog.”

Frimodig said she knows the later time for the elementary school students was not ideal, pointing out that she has a child in 4-year-old kindergarten.

School Board member Michael Sleeper said he was told parents of high school students would prefer a start time later than 8 a.m.

“They’ve been fully supportive,” Sleeper said. “I’m very confident there’s an accommodation out there that can address the legitimate concerns for the younger kids and take advantages of the best opportunities for the older kids.”