WAYLAND, MASS. (WHDH) - A meeting that will take place Monday night in Wayland will focus on proposed school start time changes for the elementary, middle, and high schools in town.
The reason for the time change, the district says, is based on scientific research that looks into the sleep cycles of children and adolescents.
According to the school district, there’s plenty of research that suggests young, elementary school-aged kids naturally go to bed earlier and get up earlier than high school kids.
Teenagers and adolescents typically go to bed later and get up later, the district says.
Based on that, the district has proposed moving elementary school start times to an hour earlier and high school and middle school start times an hour later.
The elementary school would start at 7:50 a.m., while the middle school would start at 8:35 a.m. and high school would start at 8:30 a.m.
The proposal has received mixed reviews from parents, but the teachers’ association is against it.
The president of the association, fourth-grade teacher Kori Rogers, says she worries kids will not get more sleep and that the later start for high school kids will interfere with extracurricular activities.
“I’m concerned that next year I’m going to have students that are really sleepy and tired and not ready to learn,” Rogers said. “Kids are probably going to be hungry because they haven’t had time for breakfast. I’m envisioning that I might need to incorporate nap and snack (time), kind of go back to a kindergarten model, which, unfortunately, given the rigorous curriculum that we have is not really feasible. I want to do what’s bests for my kids.”
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