Research says later school starts would help teens. But it’s not an easy fix in Wake.

Wake County has indefinitely put on hold plans to start high schools later in the morning, even though sleep research says it would benefit teens academically.

Wake school transportation staff are not recommending any changes to school start times for the 2024-25 school year. Administrators and school board members said the ongoing shortage of bus drivers and parental ambivalence about schedule changes means they can’t significantly alter high school times now.

“We’ll have a debate on what start time is optimal,” school board chair Chris Heagarty in an interview after getting the new bell schedule recommendations. “But right now that debate is premature because we just don’t have the capacity to make a change until we can add more bus drivers to our fleet.”

The school board plans to vote on the 2024-25 school bell schedules on March 19.

What the sleep research says

Wake uses a three-tier system in which the same bus makes multiple runs in the morning and afternoon. This reduces the number of buses that are needed.

In the first tier, high schools are in class from 7:25 a.m. to 2:18 p.m. Most middle schools are on the second tier and run from 8:15 a.m to 3 p.m. Most elementary schools are on the third tier and run from 9:15 a.m. to 3:45 p.m.

Wake’s bell schedule goes against the recommendation of groups who say sleep research shows high schools shouldn’t start so early.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that middle and high schools begin at 8:30 a.m. or later to better align with the circadian rhythms of adolescents. It’s one of the reasons that California requires high schools to start no earlier than 8:30 a.m.

“A substantial body of research has now demonstrated that delaying school start times is an effective countermeasure to chronic sleep loss and has a wide range of potential benefits to students with regard to physical and mental health, safety and academic achievement,” according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Parents split on time changes

Wake has looked for the past several years at changing bell schedules.

To gauge community interest, Wake surveyed people last year about having elementary schools run from 7:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., middle schools from 8:15 a.m. to 3 p.m. and high schools from 9:15 a.m. to 4:10 p.m.

The survey responses showed high school parents leaned toward the later start time but elementary school parents preferred keeping the current schedule.

Additionally, changing start times would affect things such as after-school sports and work schedules for students and school employees.

“We have a community that doesn’t have a consensus as to the direction where they’d like to go,” Heagarty said. “I think many of them recognize a later start time would be great for a lot of students. But there are also parents that have concerns if there’s a later start time (students) would stay in school later and that could impact athletics, after-school activities, work after school and other functions too.”

Bus driver vacancies

One way Wake could satisfy parents would be to start all the schools at the same time. But having the same start time would require hiring significantly more bus drivers. As of March 1, the district’s vacancy rate for drivers was 36%.

“Because of the number of bus drivers that we have, bus drivers have to run high school, middle school and elementary school routes,” Heagarty said. “So we don’t have enough bus drivers where we could run bus routes where all of our schools start at the same time.”

The driver shortage is so acute that parents now daily contend with concerns about whether the bus will be late or even arrive.

“We just stopped taking the bus in my house because it wasn’t coming regularly or it wasn’t coming on time,” school board member Lindsay Mahaffey said at a board work session.

Small changes at some schools?

Last year, school leaders floated the idea of piloting later times for some high schools for the 2024-25 school year. They said any districtwide switch wouldn’t happen until the 2025-26 school year at the earliest.

But at this point, administrators are only saying they might be able to adjust the times at some schools by 10 to 15 minutes.

Heagarty said he’s not sure a 10-minute change would make much of a difference.

“Families are interested in a meaningful change,” Heagarty said. “But until we get more bus drivers we don’t have the capacity to make that change.”