By Jason Klaiber

Staff Writer

Through an online survey, the Fayetteville-Manlius School District will be seeking feedback regarding potential changes in start times for its schools.

In 2016, a statement from the American Medical Association said middle and high school start times should begin no earlier than 8:30 a.m. to better accommodate the biological sleep patterns of students.

The same year, the F-M High School Site-Based Team, comprised of students, parents, teachers and administrators, brought up the issue to the district’s board of education, requesting research be done on the topic of modified start times.

Within the last year, the district circulated a request for proposal, which in late January 2019 led to the school board selecting Dr. Daniel Lewin of the Children’s National Health System, Dr. Deborah Temkin of Child Trends and colleagues of theirs among the consultants interviewed.

In April, the chosen consultants conducted 34 interviews and group discussions with stakeholders in the Fayetteville-Manlius community, including Superintendent Craig Tice, the school board members, the assistant superintendents, department directors, union heads, principals, parents and students.

These interviews touched on topics such as extracurricular activities, the work schedules of parents and bus transportation, helping to frame the areas that would be addressed in the survey.
“The whole idea of the earlier stakeholder interviews was just to get as many cards on the table as possible,” Tice said.

The district’s community relations committee also worked over a six-week span with the consultants to make the survey as concise and refined as possible without it losing its purpose of collecting useful information, Tice said.

“It was time well spent in terms of customizing the survey,” Tice said. He said the entire process so far has been approached in a “methodical” manner. “It’s too important not to involve the community or to rush into making a decision,” Tice said. “We’ve been very deliberate in going through this. It’s nothing we’re rushing.”

Released to the public on Oct. 15, the survey at surveygizmo.com/s3/5238064/SSTSurvey will be collecting responses until Nov. 7.

When an individual clicks on the link to the survey, they will be asked to enter an email address to which the survey will be sent. From that point, the link will not expire, so the survey can be taken at a later date once emailed.

According to Tice, this measure will encourage participation and “prevent anybody from stuffing the ballot box.”

Upon entering an email address, the automatic link should be received within 15 to 20 minutes.

The consultants will not reveal the individual names or emails of the respondents.

The team of consultants plan to collect the results of the survey and use them to shape community forums that will “drill deeper” into areas of focus.

Tice said the locations and dates of these forums have not yet been finalized, but he estimates they would be held early this coming year.

The group of consultants expects to present a final report to the school board at some point in the spring.

The board will then review and discuss the findings before deciding on whether or not to move forward with modifying school start times.

“If we decide to make a change based on the feedback gathered throughout this study, we would not make the shift for the 2020-21 school year,” Tice said. “We’re not looking at a stopwatch or a calendar.”

The timeline of the study had been pushed back, the original schedule showing the final report being delivered to the board in November.

In the district, the high school starts its days at 7:45 a.m.

The two middle schools, Eagle Hill and Wellwood, each start at 8 a.m.

The three elementary schools—Enders Road, Fayetteville Elementary and Mott Road—all begin at 8:45 a.m.

The F-M bus fleet is dispatched in three intervals, making high school, middle school and elementary school runs.