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Poll: Leave school times alone

With a School Board workshop on tap for Tuesday, interest in giving high schools later times and elementary schools earlier is waning.

As Pinellas officials debate a major change in school schedules for next year, the prevailing view among parents is clear: Leave them alone.

Those three words describe their overall attitude in a poll by the St. Petersburg Times .

Parents of elementary school students held the strongest views. Seventy-four percent favored the current elementary start times, most of which fall between 8:30 and 9 a.m. Only 20 percent supported a consultant's proposal to start elementaries at 7:30 a.m.

The proposal may be in trouble anyway. In interviews about the poll's findings late last week, several School Board members showed little appetite for such a dramatic change. A pivotal meeting on the issue is set for Tuesday.

"We have a nice balance right now for our family," said Greg Fanning of St. Petersburg, a poll respondent who can't imagine getting his second-grade daughter and fourth-grade son ready for their morning bus ride any earlier.

"I think there's a major concern of juggling work schedules and fear of change," said Fanning, a Pinellas middle school teacher. "This is a very complex situation. I just don't think we should jump into it so quickly."

High school parents questioned in the poll clearly favored the current start time of 7:05 a.m. Fifty-six percent preferred the current schedule over a proposal to start classes at 9:15 a.m. or 9:20 a.m. Only 34 percent favored the later time.

The findings echo what district officials have heard in hundreds of e-mails, phone calls and personal appeals over the past three weeks. A couple of students have taken their case right to the top, appearing at the door of school superintendent Clayton Wilcox, who lives in a Dunedin gated community.

Most have argued that the 7:05 a.m. first bell leaves them time in the afternoon for jobs, extracurricular activities and community service projects. Many of their parents repeated those points in the Times poll.

The outcry differs markedly from what Wilcox heard people saying when he came to Pinellas more than a year ago. Many were telling him that 7:05 a.m. was way too early to start high school because the teens needed more sleep to function well. Some were catching school buses before 5 a.m.

A new study by the school bus routing firm, Laidlaw Planning Solutions, offers the School Board a plan for changing the schedule while also saving the district a little money. "But it turns out to be an option that nobody wanted," Wilcox said Friday, after examining the poll numbers.

The only positive feedback came from middle school parents, who said the current starting time of 9:45 a.m. does not fit well with their work schedules and doesn't leave enough time for homework. Forty-seven percent of middle school parents liked the idea of nudging middle school start times earlier, even if it was just to 9:30 a.m.

The poll queried 617 parents whose children will attend Pinellas schools when classes begin in August. It is accurate to within plus or minus 4 percentage points. Respondents were questioned by phone Tuesday and Wednesday.

Even as the results were being processed late last week, official support for the proposal was starting to crumble.

Several School Board members expressed concern that a 7:30 a.m. start for elementaries was too early and that 9:15 a.m. for high school was too late.

Wilcox responded by asking district transportation officials to work this weekend to compress the time between the two main waves of bus routes that would occur each day under the proposal. If they can do it, Wilcox said, he might be able to offer the board some more palatable times - perhaps a later time for elementaries and an earlier one for high schools.

He said he would present those options at Tuesday's workshop. But he was not optimistic.

Wilcox said the transportation department told him that compressing the schedule further would tighten it too much, with little room for error as drivers try to get more than 40,000 kids to school each morning in Pinellas traffic.

If the transportation team is right, Wilcox said, "then my sense is this whole conversation is over. We've gone through a lot of hoops and we're probably going to get to a place where we're just going to say no."

Wilcox personally likes the Laidlaw plan, in part because he feels high school students would do better if they started later in the morning.

But, he said, "I'm not going to ram it down anybody's throat. I don't think it's a responsible thing to do."

Besides, he said, "the board gets to decide this. ... It'll be interesting to see where it goes."

When the board last considered the issue at its Nov.15 workshop, five of the seven board members favored exploring the plan further. On Friday, six of them said they weren't yet sure how they would vote.

Board member Linda Lerner, initially a solid supporter of the plan, now says it's not time to make big changes in transportation.

"There are a lot of parents writing in and saying, "I'm not happy with what I have, but keep looking because the solution you've given me isn't going to work either,"' said board member Mary Russell.

"If we can't find something that we all can live with, I don't know that I would be in favor of changing the times right now," board member Janet Clark said. "It all just kind of depends on what options we come up with at the board workshop."

The board should move with caution because start times keenly affect thousands of families, said board member Nancy Bostock.

"I'm still using the standard I started with," she said. "Are we making a better situation? Is there a net gain? At the end of the day, will more students be better off with the opening and closing times?"

Opinion in some Pinellas households was in flux as well.

Amy Johnson of Clearwater said she favored the proposed changes in school start times until she talked to her children, 17-year-old Chelsea, a senior at Dunedin High School, and 11-year-old Cameron, a sixth-grader at Kennedy Middle School.

"They said too many of their friends have to work," Johnson said. "My daughter had a friend whose paycheck went to pay the family's electric bill. I never looked at it from that point of view because I never had to."

Johnson said she changed her mind after participating in the Times poll.

Vanessa Rophie of Clearwater is among those who agree with the proposed changes.

"Elementary kids are eager to learn first thing in the morning," said the mother of 11-year-old twins, Ali and Ben, who attend Kennedy Middle. "High school kids just normally stay up late. To make them get up and go to school at 7 in the morning is ridiculous."

Chris Cribbin, a Palm Harbor mother of three, said a change in start times would adversely affect her daughter Taylor, a 10th-grader at Tarpon Springs High. Taylor, 15, is a member of the color guard. She's also learning to drive.

"If they change the time, that pretty much squashes the band program," Cribbin said. "Plus, I don't want her driving at 9 in the morning or 5 in the evening. I'd hate putting her on the road at busy times like that."

She has no qualms about Taylor's ability to learn early in the day.

"She's been fine," Cribbin said. "She brings me home As, so I guess she's doing okay."

Wilcox said he was impressed by the scores of high school students who made their feelings clear in e-mails and calls to district headquarters.

"It teaches a lesson in civic activism," he said. "I think the kids that weighed in should be real proud of themselves because, at the end of day, they probably will be able to say they've made their point."