Committee To Present Proposals for Later Start Times at Wheeling Park High School
Derek Redd Trending
WHEELING -- The Ohio County Board of Education is going to take another look at moving to later start times at Wheeling Park High School. This time, a committee will propose plans for the board to consider and present to the public.
The board voted 5-0 to adopt a resolution for the committee, which will consist of board members Molly Aderholt and Andy Garber, Ohio County Superintendent Kim Miller, a WPHS teacher, a bus driver and two medical professionals.
"We've been talking about this, obviously, for a long time," Aderholt, who introduced the resolution, said. "I think 2019 was the first conversation we had as a board.
"(The resolution states) we intend to pursue this to see if we could make it happen and then the committee is going to be tasked with seeing if we can make it happen," she added.
"This is not a vote of any kind toward definitely making a change. Basically, it's saying we have a resolution to attempt to look into all the things that we could potentially do."
The resolution revisited many of the points made by those seeking later WPHS start times - teenagers' circadian rhythm creates sleep patterns that keep them up later and become completely alert later; that when students arrive between 6:40 a.m. and 7 a.m., that when their bodies still crave sleep; and that adequate sleep leads to better classroom performance.
The committee will research plans that would change the school's start time to 8 a.m. at the earliest, preferably at or after 8:30 a.m. The group would come up with a couple of options, Aderholt said, and bring those back to the full board for a review and a possible vote.
Board President David Croft said concrete proposals are what is necessary to finally decide whether changing start times is feasible.
"The goal, at least in my mind, for you guys is to come up with the best plan that you can and take it to the community and see what works and what doesn't," he said. "Talk to service personnel and see what works and what doesn't. Talk to the teachers and administrators. Because at the end of all that, all we want is a fully informed board that is making a decision on whether this makes sense or not.
"There's a lot of moving pieces, but we've never had a plan to discuss," he continued. "So if you had a plan, then you can say, 'Tell me what's good and what's bad about it. But if we don't have a plan, it's, 'Well, this is why it won't work.'"
There was significant discussion about the resolution before it was passed. Garber questioned a paragraph in the resolution stating that it was the board's goal to achieve a later starting time. He said it would be better to state it was the board's goal to research the possibility of later start times. That paragraph ultimately was stricken from the resolution.
The original draft of the resolution also set a date of Nov. 1 for Miller to identify and provide a list of practices in school districts that start their high schools after 8 a.m., including how those districts scheduled school-day lengths at each level, how they arranged for transportation for students and scheduled afterschool activities and how they prepared parents, teachers and students to navigate the change.
That date was moved to Dec. 1 to give Miller and her staff more time to put that information together.
Miller, who said Monday night she was unaware a resolution was coming, also had questions, some concerning the research that Edulog had already done with changing start times. The company's preliminary studies showed that the district would need 56 buses to accommodate a change in start times. At the time of that study, Ohio County Schools operated 31 buses.
"So do we disregard all of the time and money we've extracted from Edulog?" she asked. "Because we've spent significant time and money looking at all of our routes ... and Edulog came back and said the only way you can accomplish this goal is by purchasing additional buses. So we've done a lot of this back work.
"The board knows my opinion on this," she added. "It's not that we've disagreed with the science. It's all of the input we've received from the parents and purchasing buses. I don't know what part of that is going to change."
Croft said a set of proposals is what is necessary to move discussion forward.
"(The resolution) at least sets forth a roadmap of what we're trying to accomplish," he said. "We don't know how many buses until we pick a plan. We don't know how many drivers until we pick a plan. We don't know the cost until we pick a plan. So if you don't pick a plan, it's easy to tear apart because it's smoke. You don't know what it is."
The resolution was passed with the caveat that, after Miller reads it thoroughly and has objections to it, it can be brought back up for discussion at a later meeting.