This week on 0684-Radi0, our free weekly podcast (subscribe here in the iTunes Store), we talk to Karen Willett, a creator and leader of Healthy School Start Times New Canaan, about the group’s formation and mission, and its assessment of where things stand now with respect to the start times of New Canaan Public Schools.
This installment of 0684-Radi0 is sponsored by Ally-Bally-Bee, a gift and home store with high quality and on trend handcrafted goods and fine art. Located on Elm Street in the heart of downtown New Canaan, Ally-Bally-Bee will host a trunk show on Friday, May 3rd for Hip V Modern Vintage Jewelry. There will be discounts and a raffle for a vintage piece, so be sure to stop by from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Here are some recent past episodes of 0684-Radi0:
We cannot just ignore costs in this. Our taxes keep going up while our property values go down. This cannot be disregarded. Our school budget is inflated – we spend more per pupil than comparable and better districts. Yes, sorry about it, NC is not the best district in the state. Due to the lame Connecticut rule that states once money is in a school budget, it is there forever and can never come out, we need to tread lightly before adding additional line items.
Why is it that Darien can start at 7:40am and have a #1 school ranking? Their students do not seem to have a problem with it. Maybe we should focus less on extracurricular activities, or at least keep them as extracurricular….meaning in addition to normal study…not alter schedules to accommodate them.
I ride the 6:20 train daily into the city and see students on it who attend schools in Manhattan, most notably Regis, an all-scholarship school that I think would outrank NCHS in many ways. These students do not seem to have a difficult time getting on an early train to commute 40 miles with their sports equipment every day.
The push for the early start time is part of the perpetual desire to spoon feed our children and needs to stop. We need to teach them responsibility. They need to understand that the world isn’t there to cater to them. The sooner they realize this as children and teenagers, the better-served they will be in college and adulthood.
I disagree that looking at ways to make sure children in our district receive a healthy amount of sleep is spoon feeding our children, and I applaud efforts of the BOE to figure out a way to adjust New Canaan school start times based on the AMA/AAP/CDC recommendations, the recommendations of all New Canaan pediatricians as well as mounting scientific evidence about teens and changes to their biological sleep patterns. No one is ignoring costs; it’s a fact that teens need 8-10 hours of sleep each night and the majority of teens in New Canaan are getting nowhere near that amount. It is not due to being on their phones, too much homework or late practices – we’ve learned through scientific research during the last decade that most teens have difficulty falling asleep before 11pm so having to be awake before 7am to get to school on time results in chronic sleep deprivation; not laziness – lack of sleep to perform at their potential.
I’m sure Darien students as well as Regis students are mostly “powering through” and seem “ok” but it’s actually not ok for us to look the other way on sleep deprivation for our children. I am very grateful that our BOE is putting the health of our children (and has proposed fairly low cost solutions) and known research vs opinions at the forefront of their decision making.
As many adults in our community are also sleep deprived, I hope we can change thinking that it’s “irresponsible” of our children and even ourselves to not be getting adequate sleep which we know is critical to physical health and emotional wellness. And, when school schedules mean that it is very difficult for our children to get even the minimum required amount of sleep, we should do everything we can to change them – even if cost is involved. We wouldn’t think twice about funding asbestos removal from a school – enabling adequate sleep is also a program that is critical for our district to fund.
I went to bed before 11:00 without issues. I woke up by 6:00 to go to my high school. I succeeded and went to a top 20 university. It can be done. It is being done today. I’m sure there are kids in rural communities that would laugh at our first world problems while they’re waking up before school to milk cows. And don’t say that world doesn’t exist, because, indeed, it does.