POLK COUNTY, Fla. — Polk County students, parents, and employees will have to make adjustments to their schedules as the school district prepares to make changes to start times.
“Why change it now when everything goes smooth for everyone now?” asked Jessica Ruggieri.
The change is necessary because of a relatively-new state law.
The law requires middle school classes to start no earlier than 8 a.m. and high school classes at 8:30 a.m. or later.
Right now, Polk County high schoolers start their day at 7 a.m.
In a townhall meeting Monday night, district leaders started brainstorming how to comply with the new law without throwing everything else out of whack, but they revealed it won’t be easy.
“It’s a little bit like a Rubik’s cube when you’re coming up with a solution. You change one thing, and the other part of the equation starts to change as well," said Ryan Delliveniri, the chairman of the District Advisory Council. “Our county is one of the largest counties that’s being affected, so when you think about it from a transportation perspective, we have one of the most difficult challenges, which is trying to coordinate all that.”
During the meeting, he and other district leaders and department heads shared that delaying the start of high school might move up elementary start times, put a strain on the availability of buses and drivers, complicate some high schoolers’ after-school jobs and activities, and put even more demand on local daycares.
In response, the district might create different start times for different parts of the county or transport elementary and middle together in one set of buses and middle and high school students in another.
Barbara Henderson, whose granddaughter attends Bartow Elementary, is not a fan of that idea or the idea of elementary students going to school sooner and potentially waiting at dark bus stops.
“It’s just not safe," she said. "It’s just not safe.”
Ruggieri, meanwhile, is worried that students who are involved in sports and extracurricular activities will not get home until late in the evening.
“After-school activities are going to be much later, and that can affect parents coming and going,” Ruggieri said.
As a mother of a second grader, Ruggieri is also concerned that parents who take their kids to and from school, like she does, will no longer be able to.
“Some parents don’t have help and might not have other options of having their kids picked up. They might have to look into after-school care, and sometimes that gets a little expensive,” she said.
Others, however, see benefit in shifting start times.
“At my school, Davenport High School, we have an issue with it being so dark in the morning that it’s dangerous for the kids. We've actually had two kids hit by vehicles last year,” said algebra teacher Octavio Hernandez.
Hernandez believes the state-mandated change will improve the safety of students who walk to school and prevent them from coming to class tired in the morning.
“I always request my counselors not to schedule my honors or algebra classes in the first period because the kids are half asleep. So, in terms of their education, I do think it's better that they start a little later,” Hernandez said.
The new school start times will not go into effect until the 2026-27 school year, which gives the district more than two years to develop a solution.
“No one variable, you know, is the silver bullet to the solution here," said Delliveniri with the District Advisory Council. "It’s probably going to be a mixture of these things.”
Polk County Public Schools first wants the community to weigh in and help it prepare for the upcoming shift in start times. The district is hosting a series of town hall meetings to educate the public and to get feedback.
The Education Town Hall will be held from 6 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. on the following dates and locations:
Thursday, March 28 – Stuart Center, 1702 S. Holland Parkway, Bartow
Monday, April 1 – Dream Center of Lakeland, 635 W 5th St., Lakeland
Monday, April 8 – AdventHealth Fieldhouse, 210 Cypress Gardens Blvd., Winter Haven
Monday, April 22 – Tom Fellows Community Center, 207 North Boulevard West, Davenport
