Eastbayri.com

BARRINGTON — More than 100 parents, students, school officials and members of various community groups attended Thursday night's forum, “Changing School Start Times: A Good Idea for Barrington?” at the Barrington High school auditorium.

The forum, which discussed the possibility of changing the start times at schools in Barrington, lasted close to two and half hours and featured guest speakers Dr. Richard Millman, co-director of the Pediatric Sleep Disorders Center and sleep specialist at Hasbro Children's Hospital and Lisa M. Bogan, a school start time specialist from the Connecticut League of Women Voters and a former vice chairman of the Wilton (Conn.) Board of Education.

For more than a year, start times have been a focus for members of the Health and Wellness Committee, a group of parents, educators and professionals appointed by the Barrington School Committee.

The forum was led by School Committee Chairman Patrick "Buzz" Guida who opened the discussion by stating that the school committee had not made any decisions about changing start times. The district did provide a handout to the audience which showed a list of seven start time options; the options were meant to be a starting point for the discussion.

Dr. Millman said that there are three age groups with varied sleep requirements and those from puberty until the mid 20's require 9 to 10 hours of sleep to be fully rested.

"High school kids get about 7 hours on average. When sleep deprived, performance goes down, moods are affected with more depression and substance abuse and driving can become dangerous," he said.

The only way to improve on these symptoms, he said, is for the students to get more sleep.

Ms. Bogan explained how Wilton went about implementing the change and stressed that the entire community has to buy into the concept to make it successful.

She was instrumental in a school start time change in Wilton, a community with similar demographics to Barrington. In 2003, Wilton changed the start times for its middle/high school students and those in grades 3 through 5.

"You have to keep your eye on the prize," she said. "Remember the greater good when considering making changes to start times. This is about high school kids, not about you."

One high school student said that if the start school later in the morning in Barrington, most students would stay up later.

Dr. Millmann said that would defeat the purpose of the later start time.

"Kids have to buy into it. The key to make it work is to change their behavior at night. They have to go to bed at the same time every night. Changing start times is not a license to have kids go to bed later. It’s worthless if they go to bed later,” he said.

Caroline Coleman, a member of the girl's basketball team at the high school, said that she and her teammates had just gotten out of practice (at 8 p.m.) and if the school start times were later, then practice would be later.

"If it's pushed back, I don't see any positive things coming out of that. I'll just go to bed later," she said.

Parent Joel Hellmann, the former theatre director at the high school, said he knows all too well how sleep deprivation affects teens. He said that the weeks leading up to a performance were time intensive and the students would be at school until late into the evening and then have to go home and do homework. He saw that the pace led to students becoming ill from lack of sleep and in the past few years.

"I limited rehearsals so kids were not sleep deprived. There has to be a way and a measuring for a balance," he said.

Dr. Millman agreed that lack of sleep leads to a weakened immune system.

The forum will be followed up with a public workshop on school start times at a later date.

On the web

The Sunrise Show, the television news program produced at the high school, will have a broadcast of the forum online under the Eagle News Network link on the High School web site, www.barringtonhigh.org. The broadcast will be posted on the web site so that anyone who missed the forum can watch it online.