School start debate continues
By NEIL ZOLOT
WAKEFIELD – The School Committee approved its Fiscal 2026 budget ask for Town Meeting, but tabled action on changing school start times, at their meeting Tuesday.
The proposed budget request is $55,425,161, a 5.94 percent increase over the $52,319,699 allocated for the current Fiscal 2025. With grants and funds from revolving accounts the Operating Budget will be approximately $61 million.
“I consider it to be a lean budget,” School Committee chairman Stephen Ingalls said. “We’re effectively level funding materials,” a reference to most of the budget and budget increase covering salaries, increasing 5.15 percent from $44,082,014 to $46,776,559.
The budget was approved without much discussion, except for members thanking School Superintendent Doug Lyons, Assistant Superintendent Kara Mauro and Business Manager Christine Bufagna for their work.
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A much longer discussion involved school start times before the matter was tabled pending more input from the public, specifically two new timelines, despite three community forums dating back to 2024, discussions at School Committee meetings dating back to at least 2023, newspaper articles on the subject, talk around town and a recent survey answered by 171 staff members and 635 families. “We’ll put this on the table to allow the information to get out to the community,” Ingalls said.
“There’s a need to get this out to the community,” member Tom Markham agreed.
The current school day runs from 7:30 in the morning to 2:10 in the afternoon at the high school, 7:45 to 2:15 at the Galvin Middle School and 8:40 to 2:50 at the elementary schools.
Wakefield is one of only two communities in the Middlesex League that starts high school at 7:30, the other being Woburn. The next earliest start is 8 in Belmont. Wilmington starts at 8:05, but the others start at 8:15 or 8:30.
Two “sample recommendations” in Lyons’ presentation to the School Committee are a 45 minute adjustment changing the high school hours from 8:15 to 2:55 and leaving hours at the Galvin and the elementary schools as they are, and a 60 minute adjustment changing the high school hours to 8:30 to 3:10, the elementary school hours changing slightly to 8:45 to 2:55 and leaving the hours at Galvin as is.
A third option is to leave everything as it is at all three levels.
Any changes would not be put into effect until September of 2026 to coincide with the planned opening of the new high school in January 2027.
“Moving into the new high school will require us to create new schedules,” Lyons explained. “If we’re going to make a change, we’d like to do it then. The new schedule would be built by September 2026, so we don’t have to make a change mid-year. We’d incorporate a change in the old space and carry it forward to the new space.”
In discussion, School Committee member Kevin Piskadlo noted the dismissal times for the high school and the adjacent Woodville elementary school would be only five minutes apart under one plan and 15 under another.
“It will affect traffic,” Lyons reacted. “We’ll have more people out and about at the same time. Whatever change you make affects something else. If we can stay within the footprint of nine buses we will, but we might need another bus, which will have a financial impact.”
Nevertheless he feels with the new high school being farther away from Farm Street and multiple access ways to the new Northeast Metro Tech, “there’ll be more room for people to move around.”
Speed bumps are also slowing traffic down.
Changes in hours will affect after school activities and plans for everyone ranging from after school sports and performing arts, after school jobs for students and teachers, child care because in some families older children babysit younger ones, and parents’ schedules. “One-third of our staff have second jobs,” Lyons reported, while noting “districts with later start times are managing the change” and games against teams from those communities are already later than they were because of the hours of the other schools.
“Child care is something that definitely comes up,” School Committee member Kevin Fontanella confirmed.
“What I’m hearing from constituents is about jobs and child care, but the other communities have adjusted,” offered Colleran, who is also a member of the Student Services Subcommittee that has studied the issue. “It doesn’t feel like the impact on them has been that big. What’s happening now might strain some families. It’s tough to get kids out of bed at 7.”
In the staff survey 26.2 percent of the respondents indicated they support a change, with 31.5 percent against it. A little over 42 percent indicated they aren’t sure and their opinion might change pending impact bargaining between the employee unions and the School Committee. “We’re required to bargain about changes in working conditions, which includes the parameters of the work day and how impacts employees,” Lyons explained.
In answers to various questions about seeing students sleepy, inattentive in class, late or absent and how it might affect their after school jobs, staff members think a later start time will result in students being more alert and engaged because they’re getting more and better quality sleep, but expressed concern over child care, impacts on after school jobs and activities, impacts on families, traffic and having students stay up later because they can get up later. Nearly 80 percent of the staff respondents were teachers, 36.8 from the high school.
“If we start school later, will it guarantee kids will sleep more?” Lyons asked rhetorically. “That’s not what the science says. Adolescents like to stay up late and get up late, but early starts interrupt opportunities for sleep.”
Almost 63 percent of the responses in the family survey were in favor of later start times, with 26.5 against them and 10.9 percent not sure. Fifty percent of the respondents were middle school families, with 40 percent from the high school.
The families’ answers to the same questions as staff members revealed they also feel later start times will improve mental and physical health, improve attendance and lead to students being more attentive and awake in class, but that there is also concern about impacts on after school activities, child care, transportation, impacts to family schedules, students staying up later and kids getting out of school just before dark or in the dark during the winter.
A lot of these answers dovetail with information relayed by Judith Owens, professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and a faculty member of the Pediatric Sleep Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, at a community forum last year.
Her findings indicate “all adolescents experience a normal shift in circadian rhythms (the 24 hour day cycle) with age and in association with the onset of puberty. This results in a biologically-based delay of several hours in both the natural sleep and awake time and changes in the sleep drive make it easier for adolescents to stay up late. On a practical level, due to these factors, it’s very difficult for the average adolescent to fall asleep much before 11 p.m. on a regular bases. Teens can’t make themselves fall asleep earlier. As a result, students are required to wake for the day during the circadian nadir, the lowest level of alertness during the 24-hour day. Early wake times of may also selectively rob teens of Rapid Eye Movement (or deep) sleep, which is critical for learning and memory.”
In discussion, Piskadlo and member Melissa Quinn, also a member of the Student Services Subcommittee, noted there seems to be little or no literature contradicting Owens’ findings or other arguments in favor of later start times. “I couldn’t find any,” Quinn said.
“I see empirical research about the benefits,” Piskadlo added. “I don’t see any against it, although there are opinion pieces out there.”
Lyons reported he was advised by other superintendents not to conduct a straw poll “because voting up or down might be based on personal bias or interests” and focus on the benefits of the change. “It has potential benefits for students,” Lyons feels.
In 2023, then-student Alexis Manzi conducted a student poll indicating 93 percent of high school students prefer a later start time, with 53 percent okay with starting at 8. In a presentation to the School Committee she said the later start times will decrease car accidents, relieve traffic congestion and give METCO students a later and easier travel schedule than having to wake up at 5. She also quoted information from the American Academy of Pediatrics indicating high school students can concentrate more if school starts later, but did acknowledge later start times affecting after school activities.
For now the School Committee hopes more information about the schedules will galvanize opinion one way or another. “It’s good we’ll have the options presented to the public so when we decide which option we want, we’ll have had feedback,” School Committee Peter Davis said.