TVDSB Eyes Later Start Times

Wednesday, 28 June 2017 05:35

Teens attending TVDSB high schools could catch a few more z's in the future with a new later start time pilot project.

Teens in Oxford County might be able to give their snooze button a bit of a break if a new test pilot by the Thames Valley District School Board is picked up.

Right now the school board is working on a later start time project for high schools in the region.

At the recent budget meeting the board approved $25,000 for the project. Chair of the TVDSB Matt Reid tells Heart FM many studies suggest a little more shut eye could be linked to better performance in the classroom and the world at large.

"Studies have shown that there are a lot of benefits to starting an hour later from a mental wellness and health perspective. Learning outcomes also improved because you have students who are ready to learn during their first class instead of kind of waking up half way through it - so there really are a lot of benefits both from an academic perspective and a mental health perspective as well."

Reid says the goal of this pilot project is to improve the mental wellbeing and health of local students. He notes the suicide crisis in Woodstock and Oxford County came up a lot during the discussions.

"It definitely weighed heavily on local trustees from Oxford County and Graham Hart during the debate spoke about that situation and this is just another strategy along with the many strategies we currently do for mental health and wellbeing and supports for our students in order to look at other ways we are meeting the needs of all of our students."

A report in the CBC yesterday mistakenly reported this program would start in the Fall and students would be starting class an hour later in September of 2017. Reid says they will start consulting with local high schools this Fall to see if any of them would be interested in doing this pilot project starting in September of 2018.

"September will be the start of the process and we will start looking for schools that are interested in volunteering; we don't want to force this on any school. We recognize that a lot of families' extra curriculars, part time jobs that are all sort of set on a particular schedule, so we don't want to interrupt that on a school, unless there is a lot of desire from that school community."