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Community Corner

Good-bye to 7:35 a.m. School Starts? Yes, Please!

Middle school's brutally early start time would change under a proposal the Board of Education will consider tonight.

Moving from elementary to middle school is a big transition in a child’s life, but the switch from 5th grade to 6th grade carries an added wrinkle in Pelham.

Along with changing classrooms to go from subject to subject and having combination locks on their lockers, middle-schoolers have the added adjustment of starting their school days at the brutally early time of 7:35 a.m., about a full hour sooner than elementary schools.

For many kids, that means getting up before 6:30 a.m., when it’s still dark during winter. This morning, there was the added element of sub-zero wind chills to make the walk to school even grislier.

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And with all the distractions of TV, the Internet and video games, it is often a nightly struggle to get pre-teens to bed before 10 p.m. Exhaustion is the inevitable result.

“Please get your children to bed earlier,” one teacher told a group of parents of 6th graders during the fall open house. “They’re tired.”

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I know this because I was one of those parents. Since September, we’ve made the adjustment to earlier hours at our house, but it hasn’t been easy. None of us is a morning person. Sometimes it seems there is a kind of drowsy pall over the household.

But inconvenience is one thing. The impact of early hours on learning is something else.

“Research has shown convincingly that kids 12 and older have a body clock which does not let them function efficiently in a classroom at that time in the morning,” middle-school parent Jamie Weyndling, who has campaigned against the early schedule, wrote in a widely circulated e-mail last week. “A standardized test given to the same kids at 7.30 a.m. and then at 9 a.m. will consistently lead to a 20% better score at the latter time.”

The current state of affairs may be about to change. After years of questions and complaints about the schedule, the Board of Education will consider a new start-time for both the middle school and high school at its Monday evening meeting.

According to the school district’s Website, Superintendent Dennis Lauro is proposing that both schools start no earlier than 8 a.m., with dismissal at about 3 p.m.

The news has already perked up our son. His first question was whether the change would take effect right away. Alas, we’ll all have to answer the early alarm for the rest of this school year.

That is, if the board approves Dr. Lauro’s proposal. Let's hope they do. The public portion of the meeting starts at 8 p.m. in the middle school library. 

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