Later School Start Times Discussed At Bernards Board Meeting

BASKING RIDGE, NJ — The possibility of implementing a later school start time for Ridge High School students was discussed by the Bernards Township Board of Education on Monday night.

The Board members were unanimously in favor of evaluating this initiative to see what the positives and negatives of implementing it were. Additionally, the Board agreed to host a BT Connect meeting in the fall to gather public input on the subject.

"We did start talking about this pre-COVID and there are a lot of positives … I would definitely be in support of looking into this," said Board member Jennifer White who noted there was a BT Connect meeting held pre-COVID but would like to see another one be held. "It would be a benefit to have another BT Connect to bring back all stakeholders."

Ridge Student Representative Petra Deffenbaugh noted how she enjoyed coming into school late under the rotating schedule.

"I think that in general a lot of students at least when they are juniors and seniors are really looking forward to this later arrival on certain days," said Deffenbaugh. "There has been interest from the underclassmen who wish they could participate in a late arrival."

The discussion for later start times began in Ridge around the time Princeton became the first school in the state to implement it, said Board member Timothy Salmon.

He asked that the district to look at other schools that have a later start time to see what the logistics are as part of their own evaluation.

"We all agree in the good of it but what is the fall out of it?" said Salmon.

McKeon noted that with the later start times, there is at least a possibility for the district to reduce costs with bussing but other issues such as traffic need to be considered as well.

"There are tradeoffs. Not everybody is going to be happy. There are logistics, there are activities, there's sports," said Board Vice President Nimish Amin.

Amin asked that the Board "aggressively pursue" implementing the later start times instead of having "discussion after discussion."

While he said it wouldn't be implemented this September, he would like to target for the following September to have time to figure out the logistics and tradeoffs.

"We shouldn’t get paralyzed by discussion after discussion," said Amin. "Let's make a decision and move on."

A date for the BT Connect meeting discussion later start times will be announced sometime this spring.

Later School Start Times In NJ

The later school start times discussion in New Jersey began around 2013 when the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that teenagers in particular should start school later to ensure they get enough sleep.

This prompted some school districts such as Princeton to push back start times for the 2018-19 school year. Read More: Princeton High School To Start Day Later Next Year

In 2022, some legislators began to push a new bill that would move high school start times to no earlier than 8:30 a.m.

The new bill (A3816), sponsored by Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin (D-Middlesex) and Sen. Vin Gopal (D-Monmouth), had initially been proposed to go into effect at the start of the 2024-25 school year. The legislation would not impact elementary and middle school students. Read More: NJ High Schools Could Start At 8:30 A.M. If This New Bill Passes

However, the state mandate of school start times was not favored in New Jersey. The New Jersey School Boards Association said school start times are a matter best left to local school boards in response to community needs. Read More: State Mandate Of School Start Times Not Favored In New Jersey

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