The new school start times schedule that took effect last fall following years of discussion and analysis has received positive feedback for its intended outcomes, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi said this week.
Citing the results of a survey launched in the spring, Luizzi told Board of Education members during their regular meeting Monday that the new schedule “appears, based on this feedback, to have met our goals as we were looking at improving these three domains—overall wellness, amount of sleep, academic performance.”
“Students have benefited,” he said during the meeting, held in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School.
Nearly 2,500 people participated in the survey, which used a platform from Norwalk-based ThoughtExchange. They shared more than 1,500 thoughts to answer the overall question of “What impact has the new start times had on your (or your students’ or children’s) overall well-being and academic experience?” They also provided more than 24,000 “rankings,” in the survey itself and by up- or down-voting thoughts shared by other participants. (Luizzi’s full presentation can be found here—during the presentation, he thanked New Canaan Public Schools Webmaster and Social Media Specialist Michelle Schneider “who really became a ThoughtExchange expert in doing all of this and put it all together and really has been a amazing help in using this tool and putting together the slides.”)
About 80% of responding students—nearly all of them at NCHS—agreed or strongly agreed that “my overall well-being has improved because of change in school start times,” according to the results, while 73% of K-12 parents agreed and 64% of faculty and staff disagreed or strongly disagreed (speaking on behalf of themselves, not their students).
Luizzi noted that the new schedule is a “brand new implementation” and there are “some challenges around rebalancing the ecosystem.”
“The school exists in an ecosystem of individuals’ lives,” he said. “When something shifts, those other things have to shift, as well. It can take some time, and there’s some follow-up work there that we’ll continue to do into the year.”
Respondents noted in providing feedback that students no longer have to be ready to get the bus during the 6 a.m. hour.
“That shift to having every pick-up after 7 o’clock in the morning has really made a difference in children’s lives,” Luizzi said. “And I think that everyone here deserves a lot of credit for making this happen.”
To the assertion that “My overall amount and/or quality of sleep has improved because of change in school start times,” 71% of responding students agreed or strongly agreed, as did 70% of parents and guardians, while 66% of faculty and staff disagreed or strongly disagreed.
Luizzi noted that many people feared prior to the implementation of the new schedule that “kids will just stay up later” if start times shift.
“That was a concern, right?” he said. “People were worried. I was worried about that. We were all worried. We looked at the research, the research said that’s not what would happen. But it seemed intuitive that it might and according to the feedback here, the research was right.”
To the assertion that “My overall academic performance has improved because of change in school start times,” 71% of students and 63% of parents agreed or strongly agreed, while 66% of faculty and staff disagreed or strongly disagreed, according to the results.
Luizzi noted that “there are some areas that we want to continue to monitor.”
“This is our first year implementation of our change in start times to healthier ones, and so a couple of things emerged that aren’t surprises, but areas of focus as we go into year two,” he said. “They include the after-school activities, commuting and traffic, and our middle school schedule.”
Regarding after-school activities, including things like doctor appointments for faculty and staff, respondents expressed difficulty with the new schedule, he said.
Also, “there are times where students are leaving school early for sports,” Luizzi said.
“That happens occasionally at the high school—more than I’d like to see,” he continued. “We’re going to be working on that. But also at the other schools, where parents are picking up kids early to get to practices. So that’s where we’re going to be doing more outreach with some of the programs that are running externally. And I do know that there’s more conversation going on in our area and other districts about changing their start times, as well, to have healthier start times. So the more that do this, the more pressure we’ll put on any external service provider to shift their times to be in alignment with the school.”
Traffic also continues to be a major problem, Luizzi said, and the new start times schedule hasn’t improved the situation. A major difficulty is that three schools are located in the vicinity of South Avenue and Farm Road, he noted.
“We’ve learned that Waze will reroute people from the Merritt to get off the exit, drive through here, right past the school on Farm, pick it back up here to get away from the traffic, which just adds more congestion right through that intersection,” he said. “We don’t think that’s a good thing to do. I wish there was a way to stop it. Don’t know if there is, but we’ll see.”
Solving the traffic congestion is “a challenge” though the district is working with campus monitors, school resource officers and crossing guards “to stop traffic, move the buses, move them through, get them out of the flow.”
“We have the road that goes into Waveny now,” Luizzi added, referring to the “Tiger Trail” (named for New Canaan Public Works Director Tiger Mann) that provides a release valve for high school parking lot traffic by connecting to the access road through Waveny.
“I think that helps because it just removes it from turning right back into the intersection,” Luizzi said. “Things like that we’re going to continue to work on. But traffic hasn’t been good during arrival or dismissal probably ever. I don’t have anything that tells me this has made it worse. It certainly hasn’t made it better. So we’ll continue working on that and see what we can do.”
The middle school scheduling also has presented a challenge, with the “upper division” (seventh- and eighth-graders) at Saxe starting at 8 a.m. while the “lower division” (fifth and sixth) starting at 9:15 a.m. The two divisions also are released from school 75 minutes apart in the afternoon.
The school district has “already engaged with an external partner to do some work around that middle school scheduling,” Luizzi said.
“They’re looking at both upper and lower division and shared staff and timing and how we can best optimize the middle school experience for our students across that whole 5th through 8th,” he continued. “As you know, it’s generally the largest middle school in the state. The way that we do it is pretty, I think, unique and important and successful in that we’ve got our lower and upper divisions. Our lower division students don’t see the upper division students. They’re not on the same bus, the way the school is set up. They share some resources with the cafeteria, library, and others, but the scheduling and even the physical location of the building, is it all intentional to keep them apart, because of the developmental needs of a fifth grader versus an eighth grader.”
The partner that the administration is working with is looking at “what’s the best way to use that time that we have our students use the resources to provide the most dynamic and enriching experience for everybody,” Luizzi said, and recommendations will be shared with the Board of Ed.
Any changes that the district is looking to make would take effect during the 2024-25 academic year, he said.
Board of Ed members asked whether there’s a sense of why students responded to the first statement regarding well-being with stronger agreement than the other statements (not really), whether there’s an update on other school districts similarly changing their start times (given the strong results, there are conversations among schools with athletic teams in the FCIAC), when those other schools might implement a change (unknown), whether there’s any telling data into the negative responses from faculty and staff with respect to different levels (at a high level, the teachers that are starting latest like it least), how parents with kids at different schools/on different schedules approached the survey (they posted comments specific to their situations) and whether there’s more work to do at the high school to make this work as well as possible for faculty and staff (yes, they’ll be interviewed with an eye on making it work better all-around).
Asked if there was anything that surprised him in the results of the survey, Luizzi said, “To be frank, I was happily surprised that it was this clear.”
“It’s not typical to ask those kinds of questions and get such a clear result from those directly impacted,” he added. “Maybe it’s because I was nervous because we’re all in. I was very pleasantly—not ‘surprised,’ I mean, I was confident it was going to work—but that it had such a measurable impact in the first year for our kids and families. I think that that speaks volumes to the reason why we did it.”
Board of Ed member Brendan Hayes thanked the administration for its “outstanding work.”
“Because it was incredibly complex having analyzed it for multiple years, pulling it off was amazing,” Hayes said.
Michael, you are being very generous when you say that it took “years” of discussion to make the change, when in fact it took “decades”. I remember when the change was first proposed in 2000 when Gary Richards was the Superintendent of Schools. At the time, the Wilton High School had just made the change. As the survey results show, the change has been extremely beneficial to Students. The long and winding road for this particular decision leaves me wondering if there are other meaningful and important changes that would signficantly improve educational outcomes that are not receiving timely consideration and implementation either by school administrators or the Board of Education. Those two governing bodies should do a post-audit why it took 22 years to start the high school at a later hour. This should be a great embarassment to all involved.