Start School Later Baltimore City

Our Goal: Safe and healthy school start times for all Baltimore City Public Schools.

Baltimore City's adolescents are sleep deprived.
The 2014 and 2018 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, administered by the Maryland Department of Health on behalf of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control asked a question of Middle and High School students about number of hours slept during weeknights.  Data is broken down for each county and Baltimore City, by age, grade, gender, and race. 
​Please see the adjacent slideshow.

Start Times and Transportation in the News

• February 27, 2023:  The Balimore Banner and WYPR discuss "Why don’t Baltimore City Schools have school buses?"  The podcast references a 2021 report "Not in Service: Why Public Transit Must Aim To Serve Students" by the Fund for Educational Excellence.
• October 26, 2022 : The student author of the two letters to the Baltimore Sun in Ju ne and September, is recognized in the Start School Later Student Hall of Fame for the 2022-2023 school year.  
• September 29, 2022: A student letter to the editor is published in the Baltimore Sun about Baltimore City's new school hours.
• July 22, 2022:  WYPR discusses new bell times for Baltimore City Public schools.   
• June 16, 23, and 24, 2022:  Letters to the editor and a guest editorial, are published in the Baltimore Sun about Baltimore City's new school hours and transportation (read here and here and here).  
• June 13, 2022: The Parent and Community Advisory Board for Baltimore City released a statement and organized a public virtual meeting with BCPS to discuss bell times on June 16th.  
• June 8, 2022:  Baltimore City Public Schools announces that over 90 schools will shift school start times.  Many middle and high schools shift to earlier start times (as early as 7:30 a.m.).  Start School Later wrote to the Baltimore City Superintendent and Board of Education on June 9th.
• 2018: Following the Novemer 1, 2016 school bus crash with a Maryland Transporation Authority bus and private vehicle that killed six people, MSDE hired a consultant to review Baltimore CIty's school transportation , upon recommendation of the intermim National Transportation Safety Board report.  This is the January 31, 2018 School Bus Consultant's report to MSDE.  The NTSB report was finalized May 22, 2018.
• ​January 2017:  The Baltimore Education Research Consortium published a report Getting to High School in Baltimore: Student Commuting and Public Transportation. The report examines the relationship between student commutes using public transportation and on-time arrival and absenteeism.  The report references a February 2015 WYPR report on student commutes.  
• January 6, 2015:  In Fiscal Year 2012-2013, Baltimore City Public Schools spent $5 million on taxis to transport students, according to an article on BaltimoreBrew about a HackBaltimore effort to develop other transportation solutions.  ​

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New Lens Production created this 2013 video about high school transportation, as part of a Student Attendance Work Group.