St. Paul's hopes of having high school start times pushed back to 8:30 a.m. across the city fell apart recently. Now, however, the district is making plans for a single-school, later-start-time pilot project at Johnson Aerospace & Engineering High School on the city's East Side.
The move, announced in a letter to Johnson High families Tuesday, will take effect next fall, and enlists Metro Transit as a partner in helping to get students to and from school.
"This pilot program will help inform the whole district about the impact of changing school start times and the ability to use Metro Transit as the primary transportation for high school students," Principal Micheal Thompson wrote in the letter. According to the district, he has experience working with Metro Transit.
This year, St. Paul had hoped to build on the lessons of sleep research by shifting high school start times from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. beginning in the 2015-16 school year. But the district encountered strong opposition from elementary parents because of a related move to require many kindergartners to fifth-graders to start school at 7:30 a.m. -- two hours earlier than some do now.
The board eventually voted, 4-3, to delay the citywide move.
Metro Transit now buses high school students in Minneapolis, and had tried to resolve St. Paul's elementary school concerns by easing the district's high school workload. But its calculation of potential travel times for 7,471 students revealed bus trips for one of every four high school students would exceed 45 minutes, which is the district's travel-time standard.
The travel-time issue is not as serious at Johnson High, however. According to a report provided to board members, 94 percent of its students could arrive at school within 45 minutes.
Metro Transit's all-you-can-ride cards also give students the added benefits of weeklong access to the public transit system, allowing students to travel to jobs, internships, community service and Post Secondary Enrollment Options (PSEO), Thompson wrote in his letter.
