Adopt Long-Term Goals

For Better School Transportation

To the Editor:

As a member of the Start Time Committee and one who advocated maintaining three tiers, I was hoping that we could find a way to reduce the overall time required to bus students to Newtown schools. Currently, there is evidence that our start times are causing difficulties for the students and their families. While theoretically speaking, we could eliminate these problems by providing a two-tier transportation system, practically speaking, we can not afford the cost — as “back-of-the envelope” calculations on additional seat requirements showed.

I was heartened when I heard that the school administration was looking into compressing the three-tier system, but it appears something got lost in the implementation of the study. The article reporting the study results states, “To bring third tier students home just ten minutes earlier would require nine additional buses and require the middle and high school students to begin school even earlier, at 7:20 instead of 7:30 am.” In short, it would require shifting the busing schedule earlier by ten minutes to drop students off ten minutes earlier. What are the nine additional buses for? If they are needed to reduce ride times, something that would likely happen as a result of compacting the overall time, shouldn’t the overall time for transportation be reduced? The study results need more explanation to be credible.

Also, I’m concerned that the emphasis has been placed on younger students only. While participating on the committee, I worked with the others to understand the existing sleep research for adolescents and the overall sleep and activity patterns for all students using a simple survey sent home. While the high school response rate was extremely low, what we did get seemed to confirm larger studies done by researchers in both Connecticut and Rhode Island. There is a compelling study from researchers in Pennsylvania who suggest that chronic sleep loss of two or more hours a night can result in cognitive impairment. Also, we saw some interesting sleep patterns for elementary and intermediate students. These studies are not definitive, but they are currently the best we have. Hopefully, in the next few years, researchers will be better able to understand sleep and its effect on adolescent learning.

I urge the school board and administration to credibly study compressing the transportation schedule. Could we adopt long-term goals of 7 am for the earliest pick up and 4 pm for the latest drop off, and try to approach these goals incrementally over several years? Can we identify the impact of out-of-district transportation requirements on first-tier scheduling, bus stop clustering where it is safe to do so, etc? Can we address the worst problems, e.g., the routes with 6:21 am pick up and 4:16 pm drop off (as shown on the district’s website)? I am still hopeful that we will find ways to improve our schedule. Doing so would enhance the quality of education throughout the entire school day.

Deborra Zukowski

4 Cornfield Ridge Road, Newtown                            January 4, 2005