The scientific research confirms that pushing back school start time for teenagers provides benefits for high school students. What you won't hear from the Wilton experts is that to accomplish this, Wilton school start times for younger students were drastically altered and made much earlier or much later. 3-5 grade students are picked up as early as 7am. Middle and High School students are picked up around 7:45. K-2 students around 8:30. This means if you have 3-5 graders and a child in 2nd grade or below, you are bringing the entire entourage to the bus stop at 7am. Afterall, you cannot leave the little ones home alone. Then, you bring the little ones out again @ 8:30am. And, if you have a 6th grader+, again, the littlest ones are coming to the bus stop at 7:45. It's chaos. The only way a school system can consider this approach is to have sufficient school busses, which Wilton does not. Don't forget, high school team away games mean leaving the high school around 2 -2:30. Athletes can't attend their last period classes. Net, net, don't be bamboozled. Implementing this great idea has many ramifications.

The above comments are all true but the studies focus were to research the ideal times to faciliate optimum learning for all grade levels and although family lifestyles were a concern I do not think it was not the determining factor. My first child graduated WHS prior to the school start change implementation. My next WHS child was able to reap the benefits of a later start while his 7yr old sibling was boarding the a.m. bus in the dark. I still feel the later school start times were an excellent change for the district. Is it ideal for me to be out it the dark at 6:55 a.m....no, but I can also see that my 7yr old and her peers are rearing, eager and energized to go to school and start learning. In the same comparison my HS students and his peers would surely still be in partial comatose states."

There's no disputing that later school start times benefit teenage learning. Practicality is another matter. It's important to look at school start time scheduling holistically. Budget$ impact transportation service. Families meeting three separate bus schedules morning and afternoon find it time-consuming, inconvenient, and costly as they wait in the car in winter or rain trying to stay warm. For every eager 7-year old at 7am is another one who finds it impossible to eat breakfast at 6:30, so goes to school half-nourished. The way Wilton structures school start times affects family members of all ages....many negatively. And then there's the athlete issue.