SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) – Syracuse City schools will start up to 25 minutes earlier during the 2023-24 school year, to the chagrin of many in the community.
“We want our kids to be safe,” parent Alicia Colon said. “We don’t want them sitting outside of the bus stops in the morning when it’s still dark outside.”
This is the second time in as many years Syracuse City School District has changed start times, with 27 schools affected this year.
Contrary to national trends toward later start times for teenagers, SCSD middle and high schools will all start at 7:25 a.m. next year. The full list of 2023-24 start times is available here.
“It’s really surprising because the urban schools were the ones that … never moved so early,” medical writer Terra Ziporyn Snider said. “So it’s particularly distressing to see a place like Syracuse move so early.”
In 2014, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a recommendation that middle and high school start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. California and Florida recently passed legislation mandating the earliest possible start time: 8:30 a.m. for high schools and 8 a.m. for middle schools. Over 20 other states are considering such legislation as well, Ziporyn Snider said.
“The research here is not under debate,” Ziporyn Snider said. “We know that the later school start in the morning, the more kids sleep, and the better they do, and the safer communities are.”
The district has cited bus driver shortages and the need for longer gaps between bus runs as the reasons for the change, according to multiple statements from SCSD Superintendent Anthony Davis.
Colon, an alumna of Henninger High in SCSD, says the district made the decision without consulting parents.
“I think it’s unreasonable,” Colon said. “Our schools are supposed to help our children be successful, and they’re supposed to help our families be successful.”
Colon, who is the president of the PTO at Delaware Primary Elementary, where her daughter attends, said some parents have started a petition to oppose the decision.
“There’s got to be a way to where we can level this out, so families aren’t having to worry about this all summer long — and then the next year,” Colon said.
Nottingham High School freshman Jewel Pierce said the student reaction is mixed, but she is personally opposed to the decision and the rationale behind it.
“My first thought was that it’s already hard enough to get up in the morning, and this is going to make it harder,” Pierce said.
Jewel’s brother Caspian Pierce, a 7th grader at Ed Smith Elementary, will start only five minutes earlier next school year (8:25 a.m. to 8:20 a.m.), but says it will be harsh transition when he goes to Nottingham in 2024.
“I get up at 7:30 [now] to go to school, so [Jewel] will have to go to school before I am even awake,” Caspian Pierce said.
Jewel says the decision comes at the expense of her sleep schedule.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to get to sleep earlier, because I’ll still have the same amount of work,” Pierce said.
Ziporyn Snider, the executive director and co-founder of Start School Later, said there should be other solutions beyond affecting the biological clock of teenagers.
“You have to start from the position that depriving children of sleep is not part of any solution,” Ziporyn Snider said.
She said schools can be resistant to changing the status quo — but a movement in opposition to earlier start times can help drive a movement to a later start.
“Sometimes a proposal to start school earlier can be a blessing in disguise, because a decision to change riles up the community, and you’re already willing to change and deal with that,” Ziporyn Snider said.
The next SCSD board work session is June 26, while its next full board business meeting is July 12.
