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Pinellas County needs to keep working on its school start times | Editorial

 
Students at Azalea Middle School hurry to catch the bus headed home. (Times 2018)
Students at Azalea Middle School hurry to catch the bus headed home. (Times 2018)
Published July 29, 2019

The Pinellas County School District needs to come up with a better solution to high school start times. After hiring two private consultants and forming a task force to tackle the problem, district officials announced recently that high schoolers would start five minutes later. Five minutes. Instead of 7:20 a.m., the first bell will ring at 7:25 a.m. Four high schools in the southern end of the county will start at 7:10 a.m. That's not good enough.

The district continues to allow busing issues to set school start times, when it should be the other way around: Set start times that benefit students and then create a busing schedule. It's not easy, given the size of the district. There will have to be some compromises. But other districts, including much larger Hillsborough County, have pulled it off.

Credible research shows that teenagers naturally stay awake later and need to sleep later to be at their cognitive best. The sweet spot for high school start times is about 8:30 a.m. Give the teens an extra hour and research shows they are likely to use it to sleep longer. Fewer of them will nod off during first period because their body clocks are telling them they should be asleep, not trying to digest continuity theory or Slaughterhouse Five. The result will be better grades and fewer behavioral issues. In other words, more learning.

Like other districts, Pinellas only has a limited number of buses and fights a chronic driver shortage. The district also has a wide array of popular magnet programs that attract students from all corners of the densely populated county. And no one wants elementary school students standing at bus stops in the wee hours of the morning. Those are hurdles to creating a better busing schedule. But they aren't insurmountable. As one member of the task force told Tampa Bay Times reporter Megan Reeves: "It's really a math problem to be solved." Part of that math problem is money, and those who fear that any fix is too expensive need to weigh the price of lost learning for so many high schoolers snoozing through first period.

High school in Pinellas used to start at a ridiculously early 7:05 a.m. To its credit, the school district found ways to push the time later. Officials also acknowledged that they might not stop at 7:25 a.m. The task force will keep looking at ways to make more improvements, which is a positive move.

Bottom line: Fewer than 30 percent of Pinellas' 101,000 students ride the bus. But busing dictates school start times. The district has its priorities the wrong way around.