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Law Requiring Later School Start Times Is Causing Significant Push-Back from Local Boards

May 22, 2023 | FlaglerLive | 7 Comments

Local school officials across the state are not thrilled with a new law requiring later start times for middle and high school students. (NSF)
Local school officials across the state are not thrilled with a new law requiring later start times for middle and high school students. (NSF)

School officials will soon be gearing up to push back start times for many high schools under a new law that mandates changes to the beginning of the school day — but some lawmakers and education experts are wary of the challenges that could come with such a change.

The changes stem from a measure (HB 733) approved by the Legislature earlier this month and signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis days later. Under the law, which goes into effect in July, middle schools will be prevented from beginning the “instructional day” earlier than 8 a.m., while high schools will be barred from starting the school day before 8:30 a.m.




High schools will experience the most significant changes. About 48 percent of Florida’s public high schools start school before 7:30 a.m., according to the Legislature’s Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability.

In Flagler County, middle schools currently start the earliest, at 7:20 a.m., ending at 1:40 p.m. High schools start at 8:30, ending at 2:40 p.m. Elementary schools start the latest, at 9:10 a.m. District staff has been working on an alternate schedule. Elementary schools would start first, at 7:40 a.m., ending at 2:10. High schools would still start at 8:30 a.m., ending at 3 p.m. Middle schools would start at 9:35 a.m., ending at 3:45 p.m.

Several members of the Flagler County school board are not thrilled by the late start time for middle schools, or the earlier start for elementary schools, and were hoping that the law would not pass. (See: “Later Start Time for Middle and High School Students in Flagler Means Earlier Start for Younger Ones.”)

Senate bill sponsor Danny Burgess, R-Zephyrhills, and other supporters of the measure touted the mandate as a way to help students get more sleep before the school day begins.

“This is one of those pieces of legislation where we understand the ‘why’ very well. Studies, medical science, has shown that this is what’s best. What we’re doing now is not what’s best for our kids. For the adolescents especially,” Burgess said during a May 4 Senate debate on the proposal.




As the bill advanced, Rep. Bruce Antone, D-Orlando, repeatedly raised concerns about increased costs and other challenges for school districts. In a recent interview with The News Service of Florida, Antone commended the idea of trying to ensure students get more sleep. But he also questioned whether imposing start times on districts throughout the state was “well-thought out.”

“It was just something that sounded like a great idea,” Antone said. “And then they were like, we’re going to pass it and y’all are going to figure it out.”

Antone represents an area that includes one of Florida’s largest school districts, Orange County Public Schools. Antone told the News Service that a one-size-fits-all approach could put an outsized strain on Orange and other large districts.

“It puts some hard start times in place. And even though it gives the school districts until 2026 to begin implementing the plan, I’m not sure this bill should be dictating what’s best for Orange County Schools, what’s best for Miami-Dade, what’s best for Broward, Palm Beach, Duval,” Antone said.

The measure includes what Burgess described as a “three-year glide path,” giving districts until July of 2026 to implement the changes.

Lawmakers also during the 2023 legislative session earmarked $5 million to help implement the start-time changes, including a requirement that the state Department of Education survey “six department-selected school superintendents which represent two small, two medium, and two large counties regarding the estimated costs to implement such school start times.”




But Antone warned the changes could lead to much larger costs. For example, the later start times could force Orange and other large districts to purchase more school buses and hire additional bus drivers.

“That money begins to add up to potentially easily $100 (million), $200 million dollars,” Antone said.

Chris Doolin, a lobbyist who represents the Small School District Council Consortium, also raised concerns about the bill’s potential impacts on small districts. As an example, Doolin argued that shifting the order of different grade levels’ start times could pose safety concerns.

“Right off the bat, you’re going to have elementary and younger kids at the side of the road at bus stops earlier, and there’s a safety concern there,” Doolin told the News Service.

Another sticking point about the bill, for Doolin, is its potential effect on families’ work schedules.

People in rural Holmes County, for example, largely are employed by state prisons, the county or the school district, according to Doolin. He pointed to rural Holmes County.

“You’ve got the prison system, you’ve got the county workforce and you’ve got the school workforce. Now, all those work schedules, I would say the majority, start at 8 o’clock (a.m.),” Doolin said.

Doolin also raised questions about how the changes would affect extracurricular activities such as sports, particularly in rural communities where, “county to county,” it would “take time to get kids to where they need to be.”

And Antone and Doolin both noted that some high-school students have after-school jobs.

At least two large districts already have studied the issue of changing start times.

In 2019, Orange County’s district sought community input on potential plans to change start-times. The district, which begins the day at 7:20 a.m for high schools and at 9:30 a.m. for middle schools, presented three plans for alternate start times.




The district received tens of thousands of responses, the bulk of which came from parents and guardians. Of the options presented to respondents, only one would have complied with the new law. “Model D,” as it was called, proposed starting high schools’ days at 8:45 a.m. and middle schools at 10:15 a.m.

Survey results showed that 67 percent of respondents opposed the plan, according to a district spokesman.

Sen. Clay Yarborough, R-Jacksonville, voted for the bill but pointed out that his home school district in Duval County also previously declined to change its start times.

“Duval County had looked at doing this a few years back, and then opted not to change some of the start times. There’s a big impact on transportation, obviously on families if they have multiple siblings especially in different grade levels,” Yarborough said during the May 4 floor debate.

The bill also requires school districts to inform local communities “about the health, safety, and academic impacts of sleep deprivation on middle school and high school students and the benefits of a later school start time and discuss local strategies” to implement the new start-times.

Sen. Tracie Davis, a Jacksonville Democrat, said she appreciated the three-year period for implementation, but added that her reservation about the bill centered on not taking community input prior to putting the changes in place.

“I appreciate the fact that you have given a three-year period for school districts to talk about it with all of those stakeholders. The challenge I have for that is, I wish we would do that first before we actually made it a bill that we’re voting on to put it in law,” Davis said.

Burgess acknowledged his colleagues’ concerns, saying “change can be hard.” But he said his service in the U.S. Army Reserves influenced his approach to the legislation.

“If we don’t put out our command intent, and say, ‘We’re getting to yes,’ and we’re doing it by this date, then these things never come to fruition,” Burgess said. “So what we’ve done here is laid out the command intent. And we’re giving a three-year glide path to get to yes.”

The reporting requirements over the next three years will “ensure that we’re uncovering any potential landmines, pitfalls, or holes that we need to look to plug,” he said.

–Ryan Dailey, News Service of Florida, and FlaglerLive

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Mia Tores says

    May 22, 2023 at 11:10 am

    Correction: In Flagler County, HS starts at 8:10am, Middle School at 7:30am.

    Reply
  2. Jimbo99 says

    May 22, 2023 at 11:36 am

    Just me, we always started school at 8 AM, with 4 classes to noon, got the hour lunch break, came back at 1 PM for the final 2 classes and ended at 3 PM. The rest of the day was about homework & play time. Grades 1-12 was like that, K was the exception. That generation could always read, write & math at or above the achieved grade level graduated into from the previous years. When the bar is lowered , we have the assessments that an unacceptable level of children can’t read at their grade level. If one can’t read at their grade level, they shouldn’t be graduated to the next grade. Somewhere along the way, empowering underachievement was embraced. Try harder, do better to accomplish. End of the day, children can’t read at their grade levels, no because of Covid, but because they aren’t hungry for the next level of education like they are for whatever it is they’re doing that doesn’t make them more intelligent human beings. It’s frustrating to read that the county wants more money for education to compete, yet the results don’t indicate a cost justification. I mean they children fell further behind with perhaps the highest levels of funding ever. So the moral of that story, money doesn’t buy happiness, nor does it buy intelligence.

    Reply
    • Someone says

      May 23, 2023 at 4:12 pm

      I wonder what year you graduated. I wonder if you have considered the changes in education since you graduated. I also wonder what grade level you would test at currently. You do know that the bar of education didn’t get lower but was raised considerably since you graduated…

      Reply
  3. B says

    May 22, 2023 at 1:16 pm

    Good luck finding a job that works with that schedule. Especially if you have one in elementary and one in middle/high. Oh we could fix it but that would cost money and rebublicons are busy defunding schools so your tax dollars can help that for profit school you also can’t afford. You know all for the hungry kids they are protecting from made up gop fantasies.
    The republican way is to sabatoge any and every government program and pretend that their for profit donors can do it better so they can line their pockets.

    Reply
  4. Skibum says

    May 22, 2023 at 3:50 pm

    Later school start times? I’m just a little surprised that FL still HAS schools, such as they are. And that the gov and his puppets haven’t yet passed another spurious law dreamt up from the dark ages mandating that all children attend a far right-wing, pseudo church indoctrination class daily until they “graduate” with a similar hatred for migrants, minorities and anyone perceived to be gay. Then they would be let loose into the world with a spanking new AR15 assault rifle as their graduation gift, scared as shit when near any other human who is not indoctrinated in their new world order view just like them. Wake up Florida voters before we one day soon ARE the dystopian, nightmarish society of every sci-fi novelist’s creation.

    Reply
  5. blerbfamilyfive says

    May 23, 2023 at 7:00 pm

    How about the little darlings get off their phones and get to bed at a reasonable time. My mother worked some evenings and my father left very early in the morning for work. I was able to get myself up for high school all by my little self and guess what I made it on time (7:30am), went to class, did my homework and graduated with honors. Go figure.

    Reply
  6. P. says

    May 24, 2023 at 7:18 am

    Can someone explain why can’t it be simple? 8 am, 8:30 am, and 9am.

    Reply
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