No major changes for Barrington High start times next year

Citing concerns they could not find the best solution in time, the Barrington Area Unit School District 220 board of education said start times at Barrington Area Unit School District 220 schools will not undergo any substantial changes next school year.

But the board members said they will continue to investigate a possible interim change that would be smaller in scale than the options recommended by the i220 advisory committee, which called for start times at Barrington High of 9 a.m. or 9:30 a.m. And the board members said they plan to come to a decision by Oct. 1 on a larger-scale start time change for the 2017-2018 school year.

The board's statements came Tuesday night during its third public meeting in as many weeks on the topic, which has inspired a passionate discussion in the community.

Early in the board's discussion Superintendent Brian Harris said he had learned the district hasn't changed start times significantly since it was first formed in 1971, meaning Barrington High students have had to start their day at around 7:20 a.m. for the last 45 years.

Board member Penny Kazimier said there were a lot of things that needed to happen before she felt comfortable making such a big decision, including engaging the community directly.

"Whatever the options are, put them out to the community, let people vote on it," Kazimier said, adding that if a future start time option were to cost more money she would want to ask members of the community if they would consider paying more in taxes to cover the cost.

"I'm not sure I can accomplish all that in order to implement this in the fall," Kazimier said, which prompted applause from the audience.

After several members of the board expressed a preference to delay making a decision, i220 co-chairman Jennifer Smith expressed concern that the board wasn't acknowledging how thorough her committee was in its yearlong search for answers on start times.

"We did take our job very seriously," Smith said. "I think you'll see that we would be disappointed to see a change not put forward (for 2016-2017)."

Smith added that she was concerned that while people said more sleep was important, they didn't truly understand the negative health risks that the current start times pose to district students.

Board member Wendy Farley asked Smith and the i220 committee not to take the board's decision as a rejection of their ideas and their hard work.

"We're not saying 'no' to your proposals. We're saying 'not yet,'" Farley said. "We have some work to do before we can implement something that is going to last us the next 40 years."

Farley added that the board members were a thoughtful, deliberate group who took their time with decisions, something that was even frustrating for her sometimes as a member of the board.

On Tuesday, around 60 members of the public attended the meeting, just one-fifth of the crowd that turned out to the previous two board meetings that featured discussion of the topic. An addition 95 people watched the meeting via the district's live stream, down from 133 last week.

Another difference Tuesday night was that the board members spent the majority of the meeting deliberating start times among themselves. At the last two meetings much of the time was devoted to presentations on start times by the district or the i220 committee and comments from the public.

At the board's next meeting on March 15 the board will further discuss a possible small change, of possibly 20 minutes, for next year and a possible big change for the year after. The board set an April 19 deadline on making a small change for next year.