Waking Up Newtown’s Classrooms

This is the time each year that we rouse ourselves from our summer somnolence and think once again about school. Our annual Back-To-School supplement is included in this week’s Bee, complete with bus routes and school schedules for the coming school year. This year the bus routes have been completely reconfigured by the school district’s Director of Transportation Mary Kelly and her staff in response to the Board of Education’s decision in June to move to a more economical “three-tier” system of transporting students to school and back home again. The new transportation schedule costs less, but adolescents in the middle school and the high school will be paying for it with less time in the sack on school mornings.

Class start times have been moved up to 7:30 am at both schools to accommodate the new bus schedules. Buses will arrive at the schools by 7:05 am. That means in most households with adolescent kids, the daily rituals of cajoling, nagging, and pleadings progressing to threats will begin at about 6 am. Sleep experts agree that parents and teachers will be fighting a losing battle for the consciousness of these students in the early morning hours. Teenagers, they claim, are hardwired to go to bed later at night and sleep later in the mornings. The National Institutes of Health has reported that excessive sleepiness among adolescents in the classroom is associated with “reduced short-term memory and learning ability, negative moods, inconsistent performance, poor productivity, and loss of some forms of behavioral control.”

When it comes to spending money, we often hear people talking about getting “the most bang for the buck.” We think the same concept should apply to saving money as well. The school district expects to save $141,000 with the new class schedule and bus routes. With an enrollment of 1,532 at the high school and 849 at the middle school, the Board of Education is saving about 33 cents per day per student by having them doze through the first few periods of class, ensuring that each school day starts with poorer productivity, performance, and behavior. What is the opposite of “bang”?

Superintendent of Schools Evan Pitkoff reports this week that he is in the process of initiating a Committee on School Start Times to be composed of school officials and parents. We would suggest medical and sleep specialists either be included on the new panel or, at least, be invited to address it. There are ample studies that indicate that Newtown’s school system is moving in the wrong direction on this issue. Newtown should not let another year pass before it wakes up its classrooms with more enlightened scheduling.