Submitted by Jim Healy, Riverside
Yogi Berra famously said, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” That is how I feel as I write in hopes of convincing the Greenwich Board of Education (BOE) to keep the 8:30am start time for Greenwich High School (GHS).
I am writing because, at a meeting on May 1, the BOE passed a Sense of the Meeting Resolution indicating an intention to vote to move the high school start time back to either 7:30am or 7:45am to achieve the school budget cut that the Board of Estimate and Taxation (BET) has demanded.
Eight years ago, I wrote an opinion piece in this newspaper (OPINION: Start time issues can be solved Dec 3, 2017) urging the Greenwich BOE to change the high school start time from 7:30am to 8:30am. The reason was simple.
The existing 7:30am start time was damaging our students’ physical, mental, and emotional health. The medical science and research supporting changing the start time to 8:30am was overwhelming. Virtually every major health organization you can think of had formally issued position papers recommending that U.S. high schools move to 8:30am start times as an urgent public health measure. These organizations included: The American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Center for Disease Control, the National Sleep Foundation, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine – all recommended an 8:30am high school start time. Moreover, virtually every leading sleep doctor and scientist at major universities endorsed an 8:30 start time as something that was critical for adolescent health.
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Closer to home, an Open Letter to the BOE was published in the Greenwich Time in June 2016, signed by 32 local pediatricians and other health practitioners, unambiguously endorsing moving to an 8:30am start time. Their view was unequivocal: an 8:30am start time was a “practical and necessary public health measure.”
The BOE listened, and even met one-on-one with one of the world’s leading sleep experts from Harvard to ask questions. Then they voted to make the change.
The medical basis for an 8:30am start time is based on two immutable biological laws:
First, students’ circadian rhythm shifts later by about 2 hours during adolescence, making it difficult for most adolescents to fall asleep before 11:00pm. This is purely biological, and it occurs in many other mammals as well, not just in humans; Second, adolescents need on average between 8.5 hours and 9.5 hours of sleep during this critical stage of their development. Each of the body’s main systems is cleansed, repaired, revitalized, and goes through major growth and development stages in a series of complex and highly synchronized processes during adolescent sleep. If you
impose early school start times that short-circuit or truncate these processes every single school day, damage will be done. Medically, this has been established. There is no debate.
Once you are aware of these facts, the rest is arithmetic: 11:00pm sleep onset + 8.5 hours minimum sleep requirement = 7:30am earliest wake time. This implies that the earliest start time that does not conflict with intrinsic adolescent biology is 8:30am.
The BOE in 2016 appreciated that “To do nothing, is to do harm,” as the Harvard sleep expert had emphasized to them. That is why they voted to permanently change start times to 8:30am, beginning the following school year. They budgeted additional funds to cover the bus expenses necessary to make the new start time possible. In the budget reviews, the new bus line-item was highlighted and viewed to be sacrosanct.
The BET and Representative Town Meeting (RTM) each took note of the additional expense and approved it in the context of the full budget. The First Selectman, Peter Tesei, also gave his full-throated support for the change of the start time and the extra bus expenses required.
In short, in 2016, the BOE, BET, RTM, the First Selectman, and the vast majority of the parents of Greenwich High School students all agreed: Knowingly harming student health by imposing a 7:30am start time was NOT an option and was definitely NOT the way to find budget savings.
Much of that remains true today. The BOE, the RTM, the First Selectman, and I am sure, the vast majority of GHS families, want a school budget that would maintain current school start times. However, the BET’s insistence on a $4.05 million dollar cut from the BOE proposed budget is nevertheless putting an 8:30am high school start time on the chopping block.
On May 1, the BOE signaled its intention to move school start times back to 7:30am (or 7:45am) to satisfy about 50% of the BET’s budget cut demands. This is morally wrong and must not happen. Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath, which is “First, Do No Harm.”
That should be the implied oath that every BOE member takes with respect to the health of our students: Do No Harm. It is a biological certainly that moving to a 7:30am start time will harm almost all our students’ physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
This is not just my opinion. It is the documented assessment of the leading medical organizations and leading sleep specialists in the United States. There is no “other side” to this medical issue.
How did we get to this situation? The BOE passed its proposed budget on a bipartisan 7-1 vote. But the BET refused to approve it and demanded a $4.05 million cut in the proposed budget. Within the BET, the $4 million budget cut was highly divisive. All six Republicans on the BET voted for the cut and all six Democrats voted against it. The Republican Board Chair, Harry Fisher, broke the deadlock and voted for the cut.
That left the BOE with no choice but to comply. At the meeting on May 8, the BOE cut the budget by over $2mm in a series of thoughtful but extremely difficult cuts, leaving about $2mm more left to cut at the May 15th meeting. Sadly, they have signaled their intent to get the last $2mm at that meeting by voting to move start times back to 7:30am or 7:45am. This is wrong and would be a tragedy for the health of our students.
Stepping back, this is not really about Republicans and Democrats in Greenwich disagreeing about the school budget. Rather, this is about six Republicans on the BET insisting on the school cuts despite pleas from other knowledgeable Republicans who hold important positions in local affairs. Consider the following: First of all, most Republicans on the BOE voted in favor of the original BOE budget. It passed by a vote of 7-1.
Secondly, Fred Camillo, our elected Republican First Selectman, objected to the magnitude of the BET budget cut and respectfully asked the BET to reconsider. Thirdly, the Representative Town Meeting, the town’s 230-member main legislative body, also objected to the size of the BET cuts at its April 21 st meeting and voted overwhelmingly in favor of requesting the BET to reconsider the $4 million budget cut demand. The vote was not close: 74% for, 19% against, with 7% abstaining.
To date, the six Republicans on the BET have stonewalled these requests.
One of two things needs to happen.
Action #1: the BET should be responsive to the views of: (1) the Representative Town Meeting, which represents all the districts in Greenwich; (2) the elected Republican leader of our town government, and (3) the bipartisan BOE. It should also listen to the school parents who shouted “Shame on you” at a recent BET meeting.
It only takes the courage of one of six Republican on the BET to say “Enough is enough” and vote for a compromise to accept the $2mm cut the BOE made on May 8. With that, we could put this ugly business behind us. It would be ideal, of course, if all the BET Republicans voted to accept this compromise in a show of unity.
Action #2: If the BET continues to refuse to compromise and take Action #1, the BOE must not throw the health of our students under the bus! As regrettable as it might be, the BOE must find other ways to satisfy the BET budget demand. It must take the 8:30am GHS start time off the chopping block.
Health is foundational to everything we do. Both statistically and anecdotally, the move to a GHS start time has been a major success in improving the health, both physical and mental, of our children.
A move backwards to 7:30am would be to deliberately impose unavoidable, chronic sleep deprivation on our high school student population every school day during a critical stage of their development.
The BOE would be taking a step that is completely contrary to medical recommendations and backward in time.
With full knowledge, it would be harming student health and undermining the efforts of our students to be healthy, to learn, and to succeed. Regardless of what the BET does, an 8:30am start time was intended to be, and should remain sacrosanct.
It all boils down to this: The BET must listen to the community and compromise on the school budget or the BOE must find another way to cut the budget.