OrilliaMatters welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response to an article about new start times at district schools, published April 19.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. The Simcoe County Student Transportation Consortium’s recent announcement of new start times in both local school boards for the 2023/24 school year is a good example.
Schools in Orillia, Severn, Coldwater and Collingwood will see changes to start and end times at some of their schools — changes that will mean an earlier start for some high school students and a later start for some elementary schools.
As a former high school teacher at Twin Lakes Secondary School, I remember this same discussion in the mid to late 1980’s about easing the costs of busing by changing a number of routes and using fewer buses, resulting in a change in school start times. At the time, there was a considerable amount of research being done about the way biological clocks work in humans — and in teenagers especially. The result of the research was clear: one third of teenagers would benefit from a later start time in their school day.
I had three sons at the time. One third of them — my middle son, Jamey — proved the research. Jamey struggled to wake up in the morning. After getting some breakfast, he would often sleep while on the way to school. His first period English teacher, Thom Levene (a really good teacher), told me often that Jamey, try as he might, just couldn’t stay awake in this class. The result? Jamey’s final mark in that class was 20-30% lower than in his other classes.
In spite of the research, the school boards at the time, in order to use fewer buses, decided to start high school classes shortly after 8 a.m. while the elementary school children would start closer to 9. I never did understand why those times couldn’t have been reversed, with the earlier start for the elementary school kids and the later start for the teenagers. (I suspect it was pressure from local businesses that wanted high school students to be at work in the afternoon, but I could be wrong.)
So guess what? The same decision has been made once again. In the article, the parent interviewed also wonders why the decision didn’t recognize the biological clocks of both young children and teenagers. So do I.
While I recognize the pressure on school boards to save transportation dollars — and it does appear that boards in our area are not being given adequate money for this aspect of education by our provincial government — I question why the decision about start times has to result in harm to some older high school students. Shouldn’t their interests, their educational success and the success of students of all ages, be the priority behind decisions like this?
Handicapping hundreds of our teenaged students in order to save money doesn’t strike me as good educational policy. I’m sure many parents would agree.
Fred Larsen
Oro-Medonte
