Believing it’s better to get public input early on, the Scarborough Board of Education is establishing a new Advisory Committee to make recommendations on a school calendar for the upcoming academic year.
In addition, the group of residents, businesspeople, school staff and school district administration will also begin the discussion of whether the Scarborough School Department should move toward later start times for the high school and middle school.
Donna Beeley, school board chairwoman, told the Current this week that her hope is to appoint between 20 and 30 people to the Advisory Committee.
She said the school board would welcome anyone interested who is willing to “consider all the data,” as well as those who would be most impacted by any significant changes to the school calendar or the school day.
“We want to be inclusive and want to hear the voices of all stakeholders,” Beeley added.
Her goal is for the Advisory Committee to report back to the school board in early February regarding the calendar for the 2016-2017 school year.
To accomplish that, Beeley anticipates the group would have to meet at least twice in December and perhaps as many as three times in January. After that, she said, the Advisory Committee would likely meet at least once a month as it dives into everything associated with changing to a later start time for older students.
Board member Kelly Murphy will be the chairwoman of the Advisory Committee, Beeley said, and Murphy will likely set the meeting dates and times, along with the agenda.
Beeley said several issues would need to be addressed when devising the school year calendar, including a need for more staff development time.
She said the school board has already heard from building administrators and staff that classroom teachers, in particular, need both resources and time to keep up with ever-evolving teaching and learning requirements.
In addition, Beeley said, Scarborough’s school calendar must mesh with the calendar of the vocational schools in Westbrook and Portland that Scarborough students attend.
She called implementing later school day start times for high school and middle school students “a complicated issue that will take time to do right.”
That’s why Beeley doesn’t believe late start would be part of the calendar for the new academic year.
“We have to be open to the needs of the school district, across the board, which is why it will take longer for (a recommendation) on late start, especially in terms of (understanding) all the research and the underpinnings for the change,” she said.
In mid-October, officials with the Scarborough School Department met with representatives from other local school districts to discuss the possibilities of implementing a late start for older students.
At the time, Scarborough Superintendent George Entwistle told the Current that there “is compelling research related to the benefits of having school start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. for middle and high school” students.
Those benefits include better physical and mental health, improved student learning and performance and higher levels of student engagement, he said.
However, there are a variety of barriers to instituting a later start, including the impact on busing, after-school activities and the family schedules of both students and school district employees.
Other considerations include child care, student participation in non-school-related activities and how school buildings get used, with many districts offering their facilities to community groups during non-school hours.
Both the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics have recommended later school start times for teens and pre-teens.
In late summer 2014, the pediatrics academy published a policy statement calling on school districts across the country to change their start times to 8:30 a.m. or later for high school and middle school students.
“Doing so will align school schedules to the biological sleep rhythms of adolescents, whose sleep-wake cycles begin to shift up to two hours later at the start of puberty,” the pediatrics academy website states.
The school day at Scarborough High School starts at 7:35 a.m., and at Scarborough Middle School it starts at 7:45 a.m.
While other school districts in the state have already moved to later start times for high school students, including Cape Elizabeth, at 7:55 a.m., very few schools in Maine have pushed the start time back to 8:30 a.m. or later.
A Closer Look
The Scarborough Board of Education is establishing an Advisory Committee, made up of residents, staff and administration, to advise the board on the school calendar, as well as implementing a later start for the high school and middle school. Anyone interested in serving on the committee can email Kelly Johnston at kjohnston@scarboroughschools.org. Parents interested should indicate what schools their children attend or will attend.
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