Dear Board of Education Members,

We oppose changing elementary school start times in the Saint Paul Public Schools.  Indeed the current proposal solves one problem by creating another problem of equal or likely greater magnitude by moving elementary school start times to 7:30am.

While research examining the impact of start time on elementary school children appears to be more limited than the data available for middle school, high school, and college students, data does exist that strongly demonstrates that early start times can have a very negative impact on elementary school children.   For instance, a recent study published in The Journal of Educational Psychology (A journal of the American Psychological Association) by Keller et al., (2014) titled “Earlier school start times as a risk factor for poor school performance: An examination of public elementary schools in the commonwealth of Kentucky” found that early start times can result in poorer school performance (i.e. poorer test scores, lower school rank, more student absences etc.). 

While additional comprehensive studies addressing the impact of school start time for elementary school children need to be performed, existing studies examining the impact of school start time on sleep behavior, and the impact of sleep on elementary school children’s well being strongly suggest that the existing later start times are extremely beneficial for our children and as such should not be changed.  Further, a solid body of scientific literature demonstrates that family time (including breakfast meal time) and playtime are critical to the development and mental and physical well being of elementary school age children.  If school started at 7:30am children would traveling to school between 6:45 and 7:15am, profoundly disrupting this healthy morning time for families.  In addition, it is well established that elementary school children should get 10-12 hours of sleep a night.  As the proposed early start time would require many children to wake up between 5-6am, they would need to go to bed very early or be sleep deprived, further disrupting critical family time in the evening.

There also exists logistical issues that are not sufficiently resolved.  It appears that the SPPS is in no way prepared to provide the after school care capacity that will be needed for so many elementary school children if school ends at 2pm as proposed.  Further, if this capacity could be created it will pose a financial burden to many families (and be particularly detrimental to single working parents and families with two working parents) with costs that will likely exceed current before school costs incurred by some families.  For the vast majority, work hours remain generally 9-5 and as such aligning school as closely as possible to these times has the least financial impact as young children cannot be unsupervised, in contrast to older students.  Furthermore, drastic changes to school start time as proposed would also result in further exodus from SPPS for families that have the means or opportunities to do so.  This is already an issue for the SPPS and current proposal could be a critical change contributing to a downward spiral for our schools in St. Paul.

Lastly, we find the “Benefits” noted in on the SPPS webpage discussing this issue (http://www.spps.org/starttimes) to be unconvincing and not supported by current data.

Overall, St. Paul has a transportation problem related to getting kids to school.  We need a solution to the transportation problem, but not at the expense of elementary school children.   Right now the proposal is simply trading one problem for a bigger problem.  We need to work together to find a solution to the transportation problem so all our children are in the best position to thrive.