Studies have long shown that children need more sleep than adults and that sleep deprivation can profoundly affect academic performance. But efforts to delay school start times in Baltimore County have been hampered by one simple fact — even a slight schedule change can cost cash-strapped districts tens of millions of dollars.
A Baltimore County Public Schools task force recommended a later start time in 2019. The idea was floated again during the school board’s Oct. 21 meeting. But such a change is easier said than done.
Currently, district buses make four trips along 708 routes to get students to school within a two-hour and five-minute window for school start times ranging between 7:25 and 9:30 a.m., said David Ramsay, a transportation consultant and former director of transportation for Howard County Public School System.
Shrinking that window would mean cramming those trips into a shorter period, potentially putting buses on the road during peak traffic hours and requiring more buses and drivers, he said.
School districts in Anne Arundel and Howard counties adjusted their school start times over the last several years. Both counties reported that they “pay for that condensed window” of time, as their bus services are more heavily contracted out, said Baltimore County school district Chief Operating Officer Jess Grim.
Baltimore County Public Schools, by comparison, provides “almost all” of its own bus service.
Such a change would require adding 70 new buses to the Baltimore County district’s fleet, Grim said. That alone might cost $10 million, he said.
Starting later would also mean changing hours for bus drivers, attendants and teachers, Grim said. Teachers’ schedules could shift by as little as 15 minutes or as much as an hour and a half, he said. Bus drivers and attendants are now guaranteed 40 hours of work. Shifting later would mean it wouldn’t be possible to give them full-time work, Grim said, in addition to needing to hire more staff.
“It’s just truly an optimization problem,” Ramsay said.
Baltimore County tried extending school days by 15 minutes during the 2021-2022 school year. That alone cost $34 million, according to Grim.
‘We need sleep to learn’
The American Academy of Pediatrics calls insufficient sleep in teens “an important public health issue” and recommends that middle and high schools start no earlier than 8:30 a.m.
“The feasibility issues, to me, unfortunately, just become excuses,” said Amy Wolfson, a professor of psychology at Loyola University Maryland who specializes in adolescents’ sleep health. “At the end of the day, I think we need to be concerned with what’s best for children and adolescents, period.” Several changes to kids’ sleep needs occur during adolescence, forming what Wolfson called “the perfect storm.”
For one, their circadian rhythms change.
“The ideal time that we are physiologically going to be able to fall asleep and then in turn wake up in the morning is delayed early in adolescence,” Wolfson said. That delay can be up to two hours, she said, misaligning kids with the man-made clock that, say, schools run on.
But their internal need for sleep, known as sleep pressure, also builds more slowly over the day. Once children hit puberty, their sleep needs stay the same, eight to 10 hours, until the end of high school or even the early college years, Wolfson said.
Combined with early school start times, “we sort of shrink … the opportunity to sleep, and then that has all kinds of downstream consequences,” she said. Those consequences range from the incidental — absenteeism, tardiness and worse grades — to the severe — more teen drivers falling asleep at the wheel, physical and mental health issues and substance use, according to Wolfson.
Florida and California are the only states that have adopted legislation mandating later school start times, Wolfson said, though many school districts across the country have begun later start times. However, Florida repealed its two-year-old mandate earlier this year, citing logistical challenges it caused some districts.
A set of cross-filed bills aimed to institute later school start times for all Maryland middle and high schools was heard during that last legislative session, but both failed.
“We need sleep to learn,” Wolfson said. “It relates to both our ability to learn, to take in information, to then be able to digest and consolidate and filter out that information, and then to be able to make use of that new knowledge or those new skills the next day.”
Continued study
Start School Later Baltimore County chapter leader, and national chapter director for the organization, Andra Broadwater, has been a parent in the school district since 2009. She now has two graduates and two high school students.
Broadwater watched Grim and Ramsay’s October presentation and said, “it was clear their intent was to tell everybody it was too hard” to push start times back.
“If the district doesn’t want to make the change, it absolutely costs a lot,” Broadwater said. Grim and Ramsay’s presentation didn’t discuss alternative vehicles and scheduling methods that could allow more flexible timing, she said.
“The purpose of the school district is not to make things easy for the adults. It’s to educate the kids and give them the best possible start.”
Superintendent Myriam Rogers has said she’s open to the idea. But during the October board meeting, she was non-committal. Rogers said the district would explore any grant opportunities to fund the change, but would otherwise continue studying it.
“Baltimore County Public Schools, like all other school systems in the state of Maryland, are in a tough time fiscally. That does not mean that we have closed the door on [later] start times for our high schools. Challenges don’t mean that we don’t move forward and pursue things,” Rogers said.
Have a news tip? Contact Racquel Bazos at rbazos@baltsun.com, 443-813-0770 or on X as @rzbworks.
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