EAST BATON ROUGE PARISH — During an event marking East Baton Rouge Superintendent Lamont Cole’s first 100 days in office, he said the district had begun looking into establishing later school start times for middle and high schoolers.
“All of the research from around the world tells us that students in middle and high school shouldn’t start school early and for the life of me, in the city of Baton Rouge, we have students on the corner at 5:30 in the morning waiting on a bus, and we expect them to show up prepared,” Cole said. “If you wouldn’t want your child on the corner in Brookstown at 5:15 (a.m.) waiting on the bus to school, it should not be acceptable for any of our students to be at the bus stop before the sun comes up.”
Cole didn’t provide details about how much later the district was looking to shift start times for older EBR School District students but said he knows it will be a “challenging conversation.”
Research from the National Institute of Health also supports Cole’s thinking. A 2016 academic paper from the Journal of School Health says that insufficient sleep in adolescents is associated with adverse outcomes such as poor mental and physical health, behavioral problems, and lower academic grades.
“Later start times also generally correspond to improved attendance, less tardiness, less falling asleep in class, better grades, and fewer motor vehicle crashes,” the paper states.
While speaking directly with Unfiltered with Kiran, Cole said that while the research supports claims that shifting school start times could be beneficial, he said the district wouldn’t pursue that change without first speaking with parents and school staff.
“It’s a huge shift, and we recognize that there are going to be a lot of concerns but at the end of the day, it’s about what’s best for the kids,” Cole said. “And if research tells us that our high school and middle school students stay up later, they need to sleep later in the morning so they can be better prepared, more aware, and more focused.”
Cole said the district would be bringing in consultants to further discuss and research the proposition but noted that he considers it both a safety and educational issue.
“It’s harsh to expect parents who may struggle with transportation to put their kids out on the bus stop before the sun comes up in what some might consider to not be the most safe environment,” Cole said. “And so we’ve got to make the adjustments, and I’m going to be asking the community to support us in making the tough decisions.”
During that event, Cole also said the district will explore what to do with empty or abandoned school buildings across the district.
He also shared a link for the district’s updated website, which can be viewed here.
Other goals Cole discussed included working hands-on with schools who had received D and F grades, along with improving the district’s rating from a C to a B.
As part of that goal, Cole said he and his staff identified four struggling high schools in the district that he and his staff have been going to and working with administrators there.
Mayor-President Sid Edwards also spoke at the event.
“The general public often does not — they often don’t see what’s really happened in 100 days. People tend to want to look at the negative. You know if a kindergartner spit on someone at Shenandoah Elementary, oh it makes the news,” Edwards said. “People want to know all that stuff, right? But I know enough that there’s beautiful things going on in our school system.”
Cole also said the district would meet on March 12 at 6 p.m. at the Magnolia Woods Community Center to go over the district’s community real-alignment plan.
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7 Responses
I love the idea of starting later my grand daughter is on the bus stop at 5:30 am to go to trans what is even more they should look at the buses the bus pass directly in front of her house and she has to go to transfer. Why can’t she be picked up and dropped off at her house. She has even stated that it makes no sense.
Look forward to a reply
Hi there! This post couldn’t be written any better! Reading this post reminds me
of my previous room mate! He always kept chatting
about this. I will forward this article to him.
Fairly certain he will have a good read. Thanks for sharing!
Need to stop bussing and let kids be able to go to neighborhood schools.
I tried for years to get EBR Schools & Central Community school systems to start school later for middle & high schools. Sent them tons of research, but the coaches fought it and school boards said they would have to hire more buses to transport high schools to school WHICH WOULD be too expensive. They were concerned more about the money than the well being of the students.
With all due respect, Superintendent Cole has his education and the students attending EBRPSS need to get theirs. Moreover, allowing students in secondary education to arrive later is not going to help the truancy and absentee problems in the district. Furthermore, a real solution would be implementing developmental core subjects in elementary schools for ELA and Math. As students are often passed along and by the time they get to high school they are incapable of writing or reading effectively. By the same token, edgenuity is not helping students learn. Students who do not attend classes and fail to complete work during the school year should not be passed along; they should be required to go to summer school. Lastly, bringing discipline back to the schools would teach valuable morals to students. Thus, when students get in the real world they will be able to choose law abiding choices opposed to breaking the law and committing crimes. Hence, the students who are not making academic progress at failing schools across the district are the same demographic of people who are causing the crime to increase in the city. The Deans in secondary education need to partner with the juvenile department of corrections to resolve the rapid crime issues in the city. Students are protected because they are in school, but outside of school they would be charged as an adult as young as sixteen years of age.
I feel that all the abandoned schools should be turned into alternative schools for the kids that fall behind let them get a GED so they can get a trade and make the children more aware of CDL and trades than just college courses because some are not cut out for college