Stonington — The Board of Education has agreed to form a committee to look into changing school start times so middle and high school students would start later in the morning while elementary school students would be the first to arrive.

West Vine Street School Principal Alicia Dawe and High School Principal Mark Friese made a presentation on the topic to the school board last week. This included research that shows older students are more awake and ready for school later in the morning while younger students are ready to learn earlier in the morning.

High school here now begins at 7:30 a.m. with buses beginning to run at 6:20 a.m. Middle school begins at 8 a.m and elementary school at 8:55 a.m.  

In their presentation, Dawe and Friese stressed that a change, if agreed to, would take two to three years to implement due to the many factors involved in making the switch.

These include the effects on employee contracts, school bus routes and contracts, schedules for sports and other extracurricular activities, family routines, child care and student jobs.

Dawe told the board that an increasing amount of research supports revising school start times as teens require nine hours of sleep. Many get less than that (in one poll, 63 percent of students in grades 9-12 report getting insufficient sleep) and getting up between 5 and 6 a.m. interrupts their sleep cycle. That sleep deprivation results in many negative impacts on teens, including decreased learning engagement and memory and increased likelihood of depression, anger, risk taking and car accidents.

She said later school starting times are also linked to reduced absenteeism and tardiness, improved mood and increased academic performance in struggling students. She said the later the starting time, the more sleep students report getting. 

Dawe also pointed out that organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Asssociation support changing traditional school times. 

In Connecticut, a few school systems have made the switch. High school in Greenwich begins at 8:30 a.m., middle school at 8 a.m. and elementary school at 9 a.m. In Wilton, high school and middle school begin at 8:20 a.m. and elementary school at 7:40 a.m. Beginning in 2022-23, all California high schools will begin at 8:30 a.m.  

While older students struggle to wake up in the morning, Dawe said younger students wake up early and are ready to go but tire out in the early afternoon when they still have a few more hours of school.

Alexandra Kapell, the high school student representative to the board, said going to school later in the morning would benefit her productivity and mood.

"It would be an unimaginable benefit for the kids at Stonington High School," she said.

School officials also discussed several other related issues surrounding the change. One challenge facing proponents of the change is that elementary students would arrive home much earlier in the day, while many of their parents were still working. Also, high school student may stay up later at night if they know school starts later, negating the benefit of the change.

The school system has 30 buses, 25 of which are on the road and five available as spares. It takes 16 each to serve the high school and middle school and 23 to serve the two elementary schools, meaning the starting time could not be the same for all schools without the system acquiring a large number of additional buses.

j.wojtas@theday.com