Welcome to Start School Later
Chester County, PA!
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Please Like and Share our Facebook page to spread the word about healthy school start times. There you will find many current articles relating to school start times and students' mental health, academic improvement, athletic performance, and general health and well-being. You will also find articles discussing the results from many studies on these subjects, both in the U.S. and other countries.
There are 12 public school districts in Chester County. Only two of them have changed their start times so far. The first to do so was Unionville Chadds Ford School District in the southern part of the county. The Chester County Intermediate Unit Board sponsored a study by the Chester County Youth Forum, supported by industry experts, to study this issue over the 2015-16 school year. They confirmed the health benefits of starting times of 8:30 or later and found solutions to busing, after school activities, and child care concerns. Unionville High School student Matthew Daniels, led a SSL student chapter, and was successful in changing the high school start times for his school during his senior year, so he was not able to experience the benefits himself. The start times were changed for the 2018-2019 school year and the district is happy with the results. The second district is Phoenixville Area School District, which voted in January, 2019 to move start times later for the 2019-2020 school year. https://www.pottsmerc.com/news/phoenixville-school-board-votes-to-push-back-school-start-times/article_32cae32e-1b68-11e9-8e92-57183c70b818.html Parents in Owen J. Roberts School District have been working on this issue since at least 2016. Eventually the Pupil Services Committee of the school board formed a Task Force to study the issue further. In the 2024-25 school year the district at last moved its high school and middle school to 8 a.m. starts, about a half hour later than before, with dismissal at 2:45 p.m. The elementary school begins at 8:50 a.m., about 20 minutes later, and ends at 3:30 p.m. Other districts will, hopefully, join in soon and begin to look at how they can address this serious public health issue in their schools. For further information, please fill out the contact form on this page. |
By US Census, Ruhrfisch - taken from US Census website [1] and modified by User:Ruhrfisch, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link
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