Ohio County Schools Now Looking at Half-Hour Later Start
Joselyn King Trending
WHEELING - Ohio County Schools now is looking for a way to start all schools a half-hour later - except for four schools who already end the day at a later time.
A school start time focus group for the district - consisting of staff members from elementary and middle schools and Wheeling Park High School - met Tuesday in the Ohio County Board of Education board room. Scientific studies have shown that later start times for high school students result in their having better mental, emotional and academic success.
The mission of the focus group was to continue pondering just how they can achieve a later start time at WPHS without the need for more buses, additional costs and upending the daily rhythms of families already accustomed to current start times. Start times at elementary and middle schools also likely would be affected by the change.
The school day at WPHS presently starts at 7:25 a.m. and ends at 2:30 p.m. Pushing ahead a half-hour would start the day there at 7:55 a.m., with students being dismissed at 3 p.m.
The issue with moving the start of all schools forward one half-hour in the district would mean most bus routes wouldn't have to be changed, but that some schools wouldn't end the day until after 4 p.m.
The current dismissal time at Bridge Street Middle School and Bethlehem Elementary School is 3:40 p.m, while Elm Grove and Woodsdale Elementary schools dismiss at 3:45 p.m.
It's expected that maintaining their current school day hours - or even perhaps starting and ending the day earlier for them - might incur the need for more buses.
WPHS teacher JoAnn White was present, and suggested there might not be a need to change the start time at WPHS.
She said she often checks her Schoology site at 5:15 a.m. to see if any assignments have been turned in by her students, and often there aren’t any there at that time. When she checks again at 7 a.m., many assignments have been submitted.
"Why are they up? Why are they not having their breakfast?" she asked. "Obviously, they stayed up too late, worked too late, or did something all night long and didn't do their homework so they're doing it at 6:45 a.m. in the morning. If you give them that extra time, they're not making the best use of the time they have."
White said she also knows many students actually come early to school to get prime parking spots and socialize with their classmates in the parking lot before school starts.
"I also have breakfast duty sometimes," she continued. "I don't see many kids coming into the school at 7 a.m. to get breakfast because they are still sitting out there until 7:15 a.m."
She noted for those kids, that represents a half-hour they could have still been home sleeping
"They just don't want to," White said. "I know we are the adults, but they are almost adults and they're making decisions."
White added she has heard a few students say they still would come early if there were a later start time. Her suggestion would be to not change the start time of the day at WPHS because "it is not broken."
The focus group spent more than an hour trying to decide how bus routes could be reconfigured to accommodate an later WPHS start time. One past idea had been to switch the routes to have elementary schools start the day first and be the first on the buses, or to have middle school students riding on the high school buses.
Community members have notified school officials they don't like those ideas, Superintendent Kim Miller told them.
It was Assistant Superintendent Rick Jones who suggested the idea of the half-hour later start for all schools be reconsidered, while looking at ways to keep Bridge Street Middle School and Bethlehem, Elm Grove and Woodsdale elementary schools from not having a later day.