St. Paul Public Schools has announced it will proceed with plans to make high school start times an hour later beginning in 2019-20 to better align school starts with teenage body rhythms.
The lone exception will be Washington Technology Magnet School, where students now attend school an additional hour per day.
The change to 8:30 a.m. start times for high schoolers was set in motion by the school board last October. A big question, however, was how the district would handle a related move that had generated controversy — that being a proposed shift of 10,000-plus elementary students to earlier 7:30 a.m. starts.
The start times schedule released this week shows all but three of the elementary schools now with 8:30 a.m. starts moving to 7:30 a.m. starts in 2019-20. Bruce F. Vento Elementary, Capitol Hill Gifted and Talented Magnet, and Riverview West Side School of Excellence will shift an hour later to 9:30 a.m.
"We understand there will be significant challenges for some families," the district acknowledged on its website. Committees are working to ease concerns involving child-care options before and after school, scheduling of sports activities and the safety of elementary students going to school earlier in the morning, officials said.
Parents and others have noted that many school bus waits during the winter could occur in darkness.
Recent discussions over start time changes in St. Paul go back to 2014, when administrators and board members said they wanted to seize on national and local research showing that high school students can benefit emotionally and academically when they get more sleep.
A study on the impact of later starts in the South Washington County School District found performance on state standardized math tests rising and the total number of crashes involving 16- to 18-year-old drivers in Cottage Grove and Woodbury dropping by 6 percent during the year under review. About 59 percent of high school students surveyed said they were averaging eight or more hours of sleep.
