Ridgefield Public Schools has announcee the launch of a new page on their district website. Enter School Start Times Project.
"We've dedicated this page to keeping you updated on the latest news from the Strategic Planning Committee overseeing this project," they explain.
Here's the latest from the School Start Times Project:
The Ridgefield Public Schools is reviewing school start times across the district and the opportunity to change them to align with current research on adolescent sleep and be responsive to elementary level feedback. Overseeing this project is the Strategic Planning Committee of the Board of Education.
All stakeholders - students, parents, teachers, childcare providers, businesses who hire teens, or offer before or after-school programs, sports coaches, elected officials, voters, health professionals, and public safety providers - all have important contributions to this discussion. This webpage has been created to provide the Ridgefield community with a variety of resources to educate and inform those discussions. Included are links to national research, reports on how other school districts have addressed this issue, a timeline, and links to our local research and presentations. We will continue to update this page as key information becomes available.
Understanding the logistics of the transportation provided to our students is key. In order to change school start times, the routes, pickup times, quantity of bus waves, and quantity of buses may need to be changed. Our current four-tier bell time system is outlined here.
For an overview of the research, the challenges of implementing later start times, and associated best practices, we invite you to view a video of Board of Education member Margaret Stamatis’ May 2017 report on what she learned at the Adolescent Sleep, Health and School Start Time National Conference in Washington, D.C. Click here for the referenced research presented at the conference.
Overall wellness of our students is essential to teaching and learning. Through a process of deep review of research, transportation parameters and costs, stakeholder feedback, and policy impact, the Board of Education plans to make an implementation decision by the end of October 2017. If approved, the new start times would be implemented with the 2018-19 school year.
Please contact us with any questions.