Chatham To Shuffle School Start Times. See The Plans

CHATHAM, NJ - The School District of the Chathams is committed to getting there students more sleep, and plan to shuffle the school schedules to make it happen.

According to Superintendent Michael LaSusa the discussion on school start times takes off from previous discussions and presentations on student well-being.

"One of the things we saw in our surveys is that all of our students are not getting enough sleep. Students in our high school in particular are not getting enough sleep. This is one of those issues that a lot of people have opinions about but the evidence is really clear about students and adolescents, how much they should be sleeping and when they should be beginning their day."

According to all of the organizations included in the report, no high school should begin their day earlier than 8:30 a.m. LaSusa paraphrased that the reason for that is the circadian rhythms of adolescents are different than those in adults and young children.

"Adolescents are essentially programmed to go to sleep later in the day and they are programmed to sleep later in the morning. And if you start their day at 6 a.m. they will sleep less than if you start their day at 9 a.m.," LaSusa said. "And that has nothing to do with when they intend to go to sleep it has nothing to do with when you turn the lights off, it has nothing to do with when you take their cell phone away they are biologically programmed to go to sleep later in the day and they are biologically programmed to get up later."

LaSusa said that there are many examples of when high schools push the start times back, students sleep more.

"And when that happens some of the negative side effects and behaviors of not sleeping enough tend to dissipate and some of the more positive behaviors and more positive outcomes increase," he said.

LaSusa also noted that it needs to be a consistent 8-10 hours a night, not six hours five days a week and then 12 hours on the weekends.

LaSusa laid out several options for consideration:

Option 1: Go Real Late

This plan would start school at 9:15 a.m. later than all the other schools. The positives in this plan include no cost and no interruptions to the other schools. The negatives included a day ending at 4 p.m. and an impact on student athletes.

Option 2: Flip The Schedule

This would flip the high school time with some of the elementary schools. The positives for this plan include no cost and no change to the bus routes. The negatives include altering the start for elementary school students which would leave them waiting in the dark at the bus stop for portions of the year.

Option 3: Join Them

This plan would mean all schools starting around the same time. The positives would be the start times would be fairly consistent and the length of the school day would remain the same. The negatives would be more morning traffic and a $300,000 price tag for increased bussing.

Option 4: Seize The Delay

This plan would operate the high school on a two-hour delayed opening schedule once a week.

Option 5: Shorten Up

This plan would reduce the length of class periods to allow school to start later.

Option 6: Hybridize

This plan would alter the high school schedule so that all courses rotate through the schedule, drop the first block of the day and virtually assign work for that period.

You can view the complete presentation at around the 31 minute mark in the video below:

After the meeting, School District of the Chathams Board of Education President Jill Critchley-Weber told Patch they have a target in mind for when to implement the changes.

"All the science tells us high schoolers perform better and experience significantly less stress and anxiety with more sleep. The Board of Education is committed to making later start times a reality at Chatham High School," Weber said. "We still have to work through some challenges but we are targeting implementing later start times for September 2020 or September 2021, the latest."

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