Rise and Shine

For some years now, members of the public have asked the Hillsborough Township School Board to consider changing the start time at the high school from 7:30 to 8:30 or even later. They cite studies purported to show that students get more sleep, perform better in school, and have better overall health when beginning school later in the morning. 

I confess that while I was on the board I was skeptical of the benefits of later start times - and having researched the issue I remain skeptical. But that doesn't mean I didn't work on the problem. The problem being - what would the district do if the state were to mandate 8:30 start times? A little over a year ago, at the April 20, 2022 Operations Committee meeting, I discussed at some length my ideas. At that point - even though board members had been nodding their heads as residents came to the podium on this issue - the board was waiting for the administration to lead with some proposals. None were forthcoming. The next day I sent an email to the members of the committee, the acting superintendent, and the business administrator summarizing my proposal. Below are the contents of the email for your consideration.

Adjustment of High School Start Times

In consideration of the fact that the NJ legislature may in the near future mandate a later high school start time, potentially as late as 8:30, I have put together some thoughts on how this might be accomplished while also addressing other issues.

• The length of the school day. Currently, the high school day is approximately 30 minutes longer than the other schools in the district. Besides the inherent inequity for our staff, this also leads to transportation issues.
• The lunch period is too short. For students wishing to purchase lunch, there is often not enough time to get in line, make a purchase, find a seat, and eat.
• In our current system lab sciences are tied to PE periods so that students can miss PE once per cycle to have a double period of science. This causes scheduling conflicts.
• Short class periods, very short periods split by lunch, and frequent, short passing periods.

It should be self-evident that a change of the school dismissal from 2:30 to 3:30 would have a severely detrimental effect on participation in athletics and other after-school activities, including employment. If the school day is shortened by 30 minutes, school can begin at a state-mandated 8:30 and dismiss at a reasonable 3:00. This would seem to be a good compromise. Also, when every school in the district has the same length of day, transportation routes should be able to be more efficiently tiered.

I propose dividing the 6.5-hour schedule into A Days and B Days. Essentially classes would meet every other day. In this plan, instruction periods would be approximately 80 minutes long; passing would be 4 or 5 minutes, and lunch periods approximately 37 minutes.

The daily bell schedule might look something like this:

8:30-8:40 Homeroom

8:45-10:05 Period 1

10:10-11:30 Period 2

11:34-12:12 Period 3 Lunch

12:16-12:53 Period 4 Lunch

12:57-1:35 Period 5 Lunch

1:40-3:00 Period 6

Classes would be in periods 1, 2, 3-4, 4-5, 3-5, and 6. Classes during 3-5 would be split by lunch. The 80-minute period for most of the day means that any day can be a lab day. This will divorce lab periods from PE. It also opens up the possibility of making PE a semester (half-year) course that can be taken during a different period in the spring than in the fall, thereby better accommodating the scheduling of other semester courses.

During this technological age, an A/B schedule is eminently doable, if not preferable. In years and decades past, it was imperative to receive instruction from a teacher each day, as the face to face instruction time was the primary means of communication. Now, students have access to online resources from the teacher and others and do not need to see the instructor each day.

There will be some challenges. Can you do lunch in three periods? Kathy Major has talked about a plan to utilize outdoor space for lunch so perhaps that could be an option. Or maybe period 2 would need to be split creating one more lunch period (10:53-11:30) and one more split instruction period.

Would students take 8 courses or 7? Even with 90 fewer work hours per year, teachers might have an objection to teaching 6 classes compared to 5. So perhaps students would take 3 classes on A Day and 4 on B Day or vice versa, (with teachers having three classes one day and two on the other). Students could be assigned to the cafeteria for study hall during periods 1, 2, or 6 on the day they have 3 classes. In any case, some modeling would need to be done to cover various scenarios.

 

I hope this serves to illuminate the suggestions I made at the recent Operations/Finance meeting during the discussion of later school start times.

Spineless, Maybe...

I've written before about the defined role of a New Jersey school board member. And truthfully it should be easy to understand. Board members are policymakers, not administrators. In broad terms, board members must refrain from involving themselves in the school district's day-to-day operations. That's great in theory and should keep administrators in their lane, except for one thing - administrators and the education establishment think that board members are idiots.

 

That's not quite right. I would change Mark Twain's famous quote above to read, "In the first place God made worms. This was for practice. Then he made school boards" because while school board members certainly aren't idiots, they rival most invertebrates for lack of spine.

Over the years, administrators have slowly scraped away most of what school board members can do and taken it for themselves - sometimes aided by state regulations - all the while giving school board members essentially meaningless tasks such as approving sixth-period coverage. 

There are a host of things that have nothing to do with the day-to-day operations of the district that school board members are prohibited from weighing in on. School board members have no input on the hiring of a new high school principal or a head football coach, for example, even though those actions would more easily fit under the umbrella of "policy" than they would "administration".

One of the big topics of discussion on the school board the year before I was first elected was how class rank should be calculated. That was 17 years ago. I can't imagine the current school board in Hillsborough having any input into something like that today.

After the disastrous Covid-era high school graduation in 2020, I proposed changing our graduation policy to allow the elected board members to have input into the date, location, and manner of graduation. I think we can all agree that high school graduation has nothing to do with "administering the schools". Indeed, it is the board that awards the diplomas! Yet I got so much pushback from administration and a contingent of board members that all I was able to negotiate was a one-sentence change that required the superintendent to inform the board of graduation details a few months in advance. 

Administrators continue to come up with novel ways to get what they want without board input or approval. In 2021 a decision was made by the administration to "de-track" students at the intermediate school level. This meant that students would no longer be grouped by aptitude in their subject classes. Now, you can argue for or against such a change, but you must agree that a move like that is broadly a change in policy, not "day-to-day". In other words, shouldn't the public, through their elected representatives, have a say in whether or not the district will be "tracking" students?

Well, in this case, the answer was No. The move to de-tracking was framed as a Student Growth Objective of the school principal, which by necessity made it a personnel matter walled off from board members. Outrageous! 

And the coup de grace? When I brought this issue to the New Jersey School Boards Association representative at Hillsborough's annual board retreat she agreed wholly with the superintendent! And the board slinked away in the mud.