By Ashley M. Casey
Staff Writer
High-schoolers in the Liverpool Central School District will have to keep waking up early for at least another school year. While Modified School Start Time Committee member Mike DeLucia said in January 2016 that having high school classes begin later starting in the 2017-18 school year was “not unrealistic,” the district likely will not shift its schedules until at least the following year.
At the Nov. 28 LCSD Board of Education meeting, the school board agreed to let district administrators draft a request for proposal for an educational consultant to assist with the implementation of a new schedule and communication with the Liverpool community.
However, some board members expressed frustration with the length of the process.
“My position from the get-go is that the science certainly made sense,” said board member Kevin Van Ness. “I am a little bit frustrated that it has taken us a year and a half to get to this point.”
Van Ness said hiring a consultant could lead to “information overload” and “spinning wheels.”
“This board’s going to look different next year; it’s going to look much different the year after that,” Van Ness said. “What could really benefit the majority of kids in this district could just die a natural death.”
Van Ness suggested the district present research on adolescents’ sleep needs and its current modified school start time plans to the public to start the conversation.
BOE Vice President Neil Fitzpatrick said the district may not hear much from the public until specific plans are available to discuss.
“There might be a lot of comment but until you get specific — ‘My building, my kid’ — it’s a lot of quiet,” Fitzpatrick said.
Discussion drags on
“It’s a priority for me,” Van Ness said. “I think this is one of the top priorities of the board. If it’s the will of the board, I will go along with the RFP, but I really want to define it and get it going as soon as possible.”
Board member Richard Pento said the issue of modified school start times has gone on for “an eon, it seems.”
“Is it a decision that’s for adults or a decision that’s for kids?” Pento said. “That’s what should be framing our conversations mostly, the decisions for kids. It’s something that affects universally all kids one way or another. It’s been two years.”
Board member Stacey O’Neill Balduf said it was “disappointing to be going backwards” in the start time discussion.
“We tend to all talk, but we tend not to land as a group. We walk away and we have nine opinions and we’re still in the same spot,” Balduf said. “I thought we were past talking about RFPs. … Get that out of the way so we can get to the next question: What’s going to be in the thing?”
Superintendent Dr. Mark Potter said the district needs outside expertise to make the schedule change a success.
“If we don’t do an RFP, the entire communication and implementation plan falls on the district, and I don’t think that’s fair.”
Potter elaborated on the scope of a possible educational consultant’s duties in an email to the Star-Review.
“One of the primary issues is related to an ‘impact study’ which attempts to identify all of the implications relating to changes in school start times (athletics, fine arts, student work schedules, babysitter services, after school programs, contract implications, external student programs, transportation routing, etc.),” he wrote. “The consultant services would also be involved in designing and developing a communication plan.”
New schedule possible for 2018-19
BOE President Pat DeBona-Rosier told the Star-Review that, should the board approve the district’s draft RFP, the district could secure a consultant by the end of the 2016-17 school year “with the thought of perhaps implementing the change … in the 2018-19 school year.”
At the Nov. 28 meeting, Balduf noted that Potter had suggested waiting to implement the modified school start time plan until after the completion of renovations at the Chestnut Hill complex.
“These options are probably 18 to 24 months out on their own because they hinge on the Chestnuts,” board member Craig Dailey said.
“It would be a fresh pair of eyes in looking at our structure and system. That consultant perhaps could come up with some ideas that we haven’t thought of,” DeBona-Rosier told the Star-Review.
DeBona-Rosier said an educational consultant would have experience with schedule changes and post-implementation issues in other school districts. She said that through the New York State School Boards Association, Liverpool may also compare notes with other districts who have implemented similar changes.
“It is helpful to hear that so many districts in New York state and across the country are looking at this too, so we’re not alone,” she said.
DeBona-Rosier acknowledged that the process has been “slow and steady” and said the board wanted to have a complete picture of what a new schedule would look like before presenting it to the greater LCSD community.
“I wish that things did not take as long as they sometimes do,” she said. “On the other hand, we want to make sure we’re doing the best thing for our students.”
