UPDATE: How Buses Are Handing Guilford School Start Time Change

GUILFORD, CT - It's been a few months since the Guilford public school system went to a later school start time to give kids more sleep. So how is the busing of students going?

At a recent Board of Education meeting, School Superintendent Dr. Paul Freeman reviewed the performance of the transporting of students.

Freeman said that "multiple changes have already been implemented which have served to make the morning and afternoon runs better than the experience during the first couple weeks of school."

Freeman said there continues to be some problems at the middle school level with some students arriving at school too close to the start of the school day.

At the elementary school level, the superintendent said additional staff was brought in to help with student supervision for students waiting for buses to arrive at the end of the school day.

The superintendent said the issues have been handled smoothly and as the school year progresses all remaining issues should be resolved.

The high school has opened 15 minutes later at 7:40 a.m this school year, and middle school 10 minutes later and elementary school five minutes later than last year.

In Guilford, the system has been studying options to delay start times since 2014. In 2017, Freeman and the Board of Education convened a task force of administrators, school board members, teachers, parents, students, and medical professionals to make recommendations.

In its report, the task force said: “Sleep deprivation is a common problem in teenagers. Currently, fewer than 10 percent of teenagers in the United States are getting the recommended amount of sleep on weeknights, and the amount of sleep that teens get decreases as they proceed through high school.”

The task force made several recommendations to minimize the impact of the time changes including consolidating bus routes to avoid increasing costs to the town and shortening the time between classes to avoid shorter class periods, among other steps.