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.
