Thomas Albushies, a Concord pediatrician, wants parents and school officials to start thinking about later start times at Bow High School.
Albushies, a Bow resident who was involved in bringing all-day kindergarten to town, said he brought the idea to the Bow school board earlier this month after speaking to “hundreds of parents” about the subject through his profession and has heard favorable responses.
If approved, Bow would join a sparsely populated group of New Hampshire schools that have approved the change amid increasing discussion about the benefits of having older students start classes later.
Albushies said he based his views on research from the American Academy of Pediatrics, which recommended in 2014 that middle and high school students start school after 8:30 a.m. to better align with their sleep schedules. Adolescents who don’t get enough sleep often suffer physical and mental health problems, see a decline in academic performance, and have an increased risk of automobile accidents.
Teenagers need eight to 10 hours of sleep each night, but only 31 percent get enough sleep every night as of 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control Prevention. Only 1 in 6 public middle and high schools in the nation start at the AAP’s recommended time, they found, while the average start time for those schools hovers around 8 a.m.
The Oyster River Cooperative School District approved later start times for its middle and high school in November. Classes will begin at 8:15 a.m. and end at about 3 p.m during the 2017-18 school year. Currently, those students attend class from 7:35 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
The Portsmouth School Board approved a similar measure shortly after, moving start times for middle and high school students to 8:30 a.m and 8:25 a.m., respectively, for next year and end times to around 3:20 p.m. In Portsmouth, the change has at least one known financial impact, as the district will need to add three buses to the tune of $150,000 and additional bus monitors.
Other districts, including Dover, Keene, Hollis-Brookline and Plaistow have bandied about the idea of changing start times in the past two years, but none have approved changing start times.
Portsmouth Superintendent Steve Zadravec said the school board needed to make the decision on whether to shift start times early to allow towns whose students attend school to make the necessary scheduling changes. Newington students attend Portsmouth’s middle school, and in high school are joined by Rye, New Castle and Greenland students. Those towns are on a different budget cycle than Portsmouth and need to approve any changes to transportation sooner than later, Zadravec said.
And Portsmouth isn’t too concerned about how the change will affect sports, one of the biggest obstacles other schools have faced when changing start times. Portsmouth Athletic Director Rus Wilson said scheduling for fall and winter sports has gone “much smoother than expected.”
“Basically we had to think about moving everything an hour later,” he said. But that proved not to be an issue for home games, as Portsmouth has lights on all their athletic fields. And most schools in Portsmouth’s division were able to arrange a later start time for away games. The exceptions were schools that are located over two hours away, such as Hanover and Kennett high schools, but Wilson said the solution was to schedule games on Saturdays and holiday breaks, avoiding six-plus-hour days for athletes.
The only sport hindered by the schedule change is golf, as matches have to start at 3 p.m. because courses typically are not lighted, Wilson said.
Bow Superintendent Dean Cascadden said the school board wants to wait to hire a new high school principal before beginning any serious discussions. He said the next step would be to form an ad-hoc committee to study how the change would affect everything from transportation to union contracts. He estimated the earliest implementation of the change could be the 2018-19 school year.
But changing start times doesn’t necessarily mean just moving the school day an hour later, Cascadden said. The board has casually discussed other methods, such as creating a flexible schedule or cutting class times.
“The school day isn’t as rigid as it used to be,” he said. “The first thing people think of when you talk about later start times is shifting everything an hour later, but there are ways to start later and end at the same time.”
The next Bow school board meeting is March 9.
(Caitlin Andrews can be reached at 369-3309, candrews@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at @ActualCAndrews.)