When I was a teenager, I was up before the sun every morning. I’d put on my shitkickers and take my flashlight out to the barn, where I’d feed animals, muck out stalls, and collect eggs. In the winter, I’d be out there breaking ice on water buckets and checking for frozen pipes. Then, I’d grab breakfast, get ready for the day, and make the 8 ½ mile trek into town to get to school by 8 AM.
On the weekends – and all summer long – I had to be up even earlier to make it to my job in town by 7:30 AM.
So you can probably imagine that the first time I ever heard someone in Howard County say that high school kids are suffering harm by being up too early, I rolled my eyes – hard.
But, because I’m not a total asshole, I set my skepticism aside and looked at the science. There seemed to be a lot of smart people talking about the need for later high school start times. And sure enough, the science is clear that adequate sleep is important for teens; that their circadian rhythms tend to shift later when they hit puberty; and that school start times are too early for many of them to function optimally. The consistent recommendation is to start high schools later for better sleep outcomes.
Welp, there you go. That taught me a good lesson about perspective.
Unfortunately, I’m starting to think that a loss of perspective may be the root cause of why Howard County’s change in school start times went so spectacularly wrong.
I don’t think the Board of Education, past and present, was wrong in wanting to start high schools later. I think they lost perspective of the fact that science is one thing; reality is another. The reality – which the Superintendent and Central Office staff clearly communicated from the very beginning – was that implementing this was going to require funding, and it was going to be difficult due to the ongoing bus driver shortage. The Board seemingly ignored that reality in choosing to move forward without funding and in spite of the bus driver shortage – all of which greatly increased the complexity, the impact, and the risks. Sadly, the risks the Board accepted in service to this endeavor were realized.
We as a community lost perspective as well. Our feedback on start times was quite varied, yet the rigid dismissal of the very real, potentially negative impacts of this change on some families suggested that, much like the Board, some wanted to implement this change without much regard to other people’s realities. On the other hand, the casual dismissal of the science that underlies the need to start high schools later demonstrated an inability for some to see past the end of their own noses.
I’m not going to come down as hard as everyone else on the Superintendent and Central Office staff. I’m sure it was not lost on them that the Board was very motivated to make this happen, and they did what they were directed to do in order to keep their jobs. Having read pages and pages of briefings, reports, and memos from 2021 onward regarding the start time change, no one can reasonably argue that they didn’t do their due diligence and clearly communicate the risks, contingencies, and realities to the Board. That said, I think it’s clear that they made some mistakes that have caused some pretty egregious problems.
In the end, some high school students gained some extra sleep, some didn’t, and a lot of students are experiencing disruptions right now. That’s our new reality.
As we all deal with the fallout, I’m going to continue to try to maintain perspective. While my kids both lost bus service this year and are walking 2 and 1.5 miles, respectively, to school, I know it could be worse – they could be dealing with the bus fiasco.
Or, you know, they could be up shoveling horseshit before dawn every day. 🙂
I hope things improve for everyone soon. Good luck. -J.