NewtonHighSchools.com is parent-led organization that advocates for healthy high school start times. We asked School Committee candidates in the four contested races to answer three multiple choice questions, while giving them the opportunity to comment.
As the author, my goal was to ask direct questions that the would not consume too much of the candidates’ time. Sorry to those who might think my questions are odd. Many thanks to the seven candidates who completed the questionnaires–Bridget Ray-Canada, Kathy Marchi, Cyrus Vaghar, Margaret Albright, Eileen Sandberg, Matthew Miller, and Gail Spector.
If you are interested in joining our email list, please send your full name and email address to [email protected]
Thank you for your persistence on this, Jeffrey. It’s important.
The Weston superintendent recently announced tentative plans to implement a delayed start time in Fall 2018 (they formed a working group in January 2017). The most likely scenario has both high school and middle school beginning at 8:45 and ending at 3:15. Great news for the health and well being of Weston teens! Let’s get this done in Newton!
@Kathy Winters that’s great news. Newton didn’t even establish a later start time working group until 2015, and has delayed any implementation until 2019. We need a School Committee that will stop waiting and take this seriously.
Thanks MMQC.
Great news out of Weston. It sounds like their superintendent showed commendable leadership, made start times a priority, and he is getting the job done quickly. Wow. Hopefully, Newton can follow his example.
Very commendable for Weston. I strongly suspect, however, that the task was less onerous to accomplish in a district with 5 schools, 190 teachers and which educates approximately 2,500 students. Source, Mass. DESE School and District Profiles. Newton, by comparison, has 22 schools, 1,076 teachers, and an enrollment of nearly 13,000 students. Ibid.
Lisap–you are making excuses. Onerous?
Seattle has 99 schools, 6,371 staff, and enrollment of 54,976.
Fairfax has 196 schools, 24,600 staff, and enrollment of 189,000.
Seattle and Fairfax have ALREADY switched to an later high school start. Newton has the same grit as Seattle, Fairfax, and Weston. If they can do it, we can follow their lead. We need leadership that focuses on results, not excuses.
The problem in Newton–the reason this has dragged on for so long, is a complete lack of accountability and leadership from our elected officials. As long as parents continue to let them off the hook, they will not change start times…
I’ve been raising awareness about this issue since I ran for Mayor in 2005. Since then, absolutely no progress has been made in Newton. The School Committee has demonstrated a complete inability to deal with this. Frankly, I was hoping one of the two remaining mayoral candidates would give start times more than lip service, because a new mayor could fix this problem in time for the next school year. But I’ve come to the unfortunate conclusion that they are both full of crap, and no matter which one gets elected we’ll still be grappling with this start time issue four years from now.
@Jeffrey, It’s great that Seattle and Fairfax County moved forward on this so quickly, so responsively. I see that both have members elected by districts.
@Mike Striar the fact that the School Committee did not establish a start time working group until 10 years after you brought up the issue is revealing. Before 2015, the School Committee had not even officially assigned a group of people to examine this specific issue and collect data, let alone take decisive action.
@Jeffrey Pontiff,
If you are going to compare Newton to Seattle, then I think it is appropriate to include the factual detail that the school department received a $2.3 million dollar grant from the Seattle City Council in order to make up the funding shortfall. All things being equal, one may argue that Newton should be able to accomplish the same thing. But, as the saying goes, “the devil is in the details”.
The details here, in Newton, include contractual negotiations with not simply the Teachers’ Union but with every source of services in the public schools from transportation to food service. Unless there’s a piece of municipal law I’m missing, one party to a negotiated contract cannot unilaterally change the terms of the agreement mid-contract. There’s a difference between “making excuses” and understanding the issues that need to be overcome and resolved in order to achieve a goal. It would be great if the School Committee had the power of the Pharaoh to proclaim: “So let it be written, so let it be done.” Me thinks it’s a tad more complex than that.
@Lisap– Complex? Sorry! Landing a human on the Moon was complex. Building the Empire State Building was complex. Those huge projects were planned and executed in far less time than the Newton School Committee has taken to change high school start times. Stop making excuses for these pathetic losers.
@Mike Striar-
“[T]hese pathetic losers” are our neighbors and fellow citizens doing, from what I can tell, a pretty thankless job to the best of their abilities. I know you feel passionately about the issue but I don’t think that justifies vituperative discourse and calling the entire committee “pathetic losers”.
These “neighbors and fellow citizens” have done irreparable harm to thousands of teenage school children. At least two of them [Albright and Siegel] ran for SC with a promise to change high school start times. People who fail to keep their election promises do not deserve your support.
The Weston Public Schools, under the excellent leadership of Dr. Midge Connolly (a Newton resident and former assistant principal at Newton North), are taking a great step in moving to later start times for their middle and high schools students. I agree wholeheartedly that Newton must do the same, and I understand the frustration of people who have tried to get this implemented for years.
It’s important to note that Weston has 5 schools and 2,111 students. Newton has 23 schools and 12,657 students. Newton North and Newton South High Schools are each about the size of the entire Weston Public Schools. In Dr. Connolly’s letter, she wrote that the smaller size of Weston’s schools allowed them to be “nimble”, and it’s true; Weston High School will likely not have to change its block schedule. In Newton’s High Schools, though, we have nearly 4000 students with separate schedules and different block lengths to support classes such as longer science labs. The problem of arranging the schedules to compress the school day, while working with many teachers and staff, is much more complex that what Weston faces. Even so, Dr. Connolly wrote that Weston faces challenges, including,
“…impacts on bus transportation, our students who participate in our METCO Program, athletic program schedules, family schedules, and childcare. ” Newton faces these same challenges.
None of this is a reason why we can’t implement this change. We have clear evidence that allowing our students to get more sleep is critically important to their well-being and academic achievement, and many candidates in the current School Committee races join me in strongly supporting later high school start times. I know that many residents are frustrated by the pace that this discussion has taken. I’ve seen real progress this year, and I look forward to learning more about the plans to address the scheduling issues in the coming year.
Eileen Sandberg
Candidate for School Committee, Ward 3
I appreciate Eileen Sandberg’s encouraging post. Here’s the way I see it…
Yes, there are many factors to consider when changing high school start times. They’ve all been adequately considered. Change the start times, and everything else will fall into place. We’ve allowed this tail to wag the dog for far too long.
Thank you, Eileen, for your thoughtful and nuanced post. And you are correct; Newton has 23 schools (when one properly includes Central High School, an often overlooked program). I agree with you that substantial progress has been made, and will be made. I’ve seen nothing to suggest that the will and determination to accomplish this are lacking.
LisaP, who cares about high school start times, brings up some good points. I want to comment on them, since these points illustrate some of the core problems that have slowed down the process.
She mentions the complication of negotiating with all of the unions. This “complication” did not stop Seattle, Fairfax, and Weston. Why isn’t our School Committee negotiating with the unions right now? The NPS decided to move forward last March. What are we waiting for? No union would be as reckless as to hold students’ health hostage. The NPS is proposing a change that does not require union members to work more hours. Some union members are better off and some are worse off. Let’s get broad, big picture, agreement now. We can worry about minor details later. Let’s start the ball rolling. This is a big change. If we wait for all of the details to be ironed out, and only then start negotiating with every individual one at a time, nothing will ever happen.
Second, LisaP mentions that the Seattle Public Schools received a $2.3M grant. Some scenarios that the School Committee studied require no funding. Scenarios that put a minor financial strain on the system can be realized with modest increases in average class size (a quarter of a student). The NPS could have already gone to the City Council and made the case that late start time is important and that they need a modest financial allocation (about $750K). This has not happened. Why not? The case needs to made at some point. Again, what are we waiting for? How can we use lack of funding as an excuse when no one on the School Committee has gone to the Council, made the case that late start start times are important, and asked for support?
Every month we wait, our kids are subject to worse mental and physical health, worse class room performance, higher incidence of traffic accidents (2 extra per month, city-wide). Now is the not the time to get mired down in details. These excuses do not cut it.
@ Jeffrey Pontiff- the contract (or collective bargaining agreement) with NTA goes thru August of 2018, and I do believe that negotiations with the School Committee are underway.
And yes, I do support later start times though as the parent of a chronically sleep deprived teen who took almost entirely AP/Honors classes, I would prefer to see a really dramatic shift in start times to no earlier than 9:00 am for high school students. I would like to see the “no homework” weekends apply to kids in AP/Honors classes so that these kids actually get a weekend of breathing room instead of more homework or, just as bad, an exam scheduled immediately after their “no homework ” weekend.
I’d also like to see elementary and middle school children afforded a reasonable amount of time to eat their lunch meal and then an opportunity to get outdoors and enjoy a little fresh air and exercise before having to settle down for an afternoon of focus, attention and work. And, at bottom, I’d like to see a school system which from top to bottom, from the Superintendent down to the least paid part-time employee, commits to putting the needs and success of our children at the forefront above and before all competing interests.
Lisap, the timing of the contract does not matter. The SC can negotiate an addendum to the current contract. Again, that is an excuse for delay.
I could have responded to your early points more succinctly by simply saying that we should not make excuses for delays by invoking imagined future obstacles. At least one member of the School Committee does this all of the time. We can’t say that our situation is different from Seattle, Weston, or Fairfax due to lack of funding from the city or union pressure, until the SC makes the effort to attain funding and union support. To do so, is equivalent to saying, “I have not started to diet because next weekend I might feel hungry.”
I was recently at an event with Fleishman and Ruth Goldman and someone asked them about high school start times. Their response was what I expected: more hemming and hawing. Surprise, surprise! THEN Fleishman started on about kids spending too much time on their phones and maybe that’s why high schoolers can’t fall asleep. He was characteristically flippant.
Personal anecdote: I was in high school before smartphones, I couldn’t fall asleep at night and there were other (different) distractions – I’d be up late surfing the internet on the family computer and chatting with my friends on AIM, or I’d be watching reruns on Nick-at-Nite, or I’d be on the phone with my friends, or I’d simply be reading. Other times I was too anxious about tests and homework to fall asleep. There will always be something that distracts some kids from falling asleep on time.
It’s easy for Fleishman to blame cell phones, because it excuses him from dealing with this matter.
A. It costs money?? Of course it does. The Mayor claims he has found $5 mil in cost savings through zero based budgeting. No one knows where that money is going or where it went, there’s your funding OR bridge the gap between implementation and the new budget season by using rainy day funds.
B. Contract? Next year will be negotiations. Make every contract, until this gets done, a one year deal (instead of 3) so as soon as there is some movement on this issue they can negotiate a long term contract.
There are some issues way more important than money and budgeting and this is one of them. I wish there was a way to measure how kids over the years were adversely affected by this policy, but it’s impossible. If there were, I am sure the city would fight all kinds of lawsuits for harming children.
The Board of Directors of the schools have got to get this done.
MMQC—You are right, this is not about cell phones! Teens have trouble falling asleep early because of a physiological shift during adolescence. It is disturbing to hear that our superintendent is dismissing the science. It’s not just humans – research shows that other adolescent mammals also experience this shift, and they certainly aren’t up late texting!
Eileen- Thank you for your attention to this issue. I know you can’t promise to put on your cape and fix this if you are elected, but the issue calls for a sense of urgency. Every year we wait means more car accidents, more kids suffering from depression, more substance abuse, more sports injuries, etc.
Weston may be smaller, but I admire the way the superintendent and the Start Time/Scheduling Innovation Steering Committee have handled this. After looking at the issue for 10 months, they’ve told the community: this is an important health issue, a later start time is happening, here’s the most likely scenario, and give us feedback while we roll up our sleeves and tackle the logistics with a target of Fall 2018.