Students wait to board a school bus at Arbor View High School in Las Vegas Thursday, Jan. 5, 2023.
Friday, Sept. 8, 2023 | 2 a.m.
CCSD schools
The Nevada Department of Education is moving ahead with regulations to push back school start times statewide despite opposition from some district officials — including from the Clark County School District, which has threatened legal action.
The state board is considering guidance to require that all public schools start after 8 a.m., citing research into the biological rhythms of adolescents and the health and wellness benefits of accommodating young people’s natural functioning with later start times. The proposed regulations have schools phasing in later start times beginning with the 2024-25 school year.
In CCSD, high schools generally start about 7 a.m. The district standardized its start and dismissal times in 2022 to streamline busing, scheduling high schools to start around 7 a.m., middle schools around 8 a.m. and elementary schools around 9 a.m.
CCSD, with a bus route system that covers a 7,900-square-mile county, had struggled with low transportation staffing and associated major delays in getting children to school and home.
CCSD administrators directly adjusted the start times, and they argue that state laws delegate scheduling to individual districts, not the state Department of Education.
“It is clear that the Nevada Legislature has not authorized DOE to make this type of sweeping change to the education system in Nevada, and CCSD will take all steps, including litigation, to prevent any ultra vires decision by the department on this particular issue,” CCSD General Counsel Luke Puschnig told the state board at its meeting Wednesday in Las Vegas, where the board voted to send draft regulation language to state staffers for refining. The state board started talking about statewide guidelines in winter 2022.
Ultra vires is a legal term that means “beyond one’s legal power or authority.”
School Board President Felicia Ortiz disputed that the state wanted to make “sweeping” changes, noting that the proposed regulation allows schools to seek waivers if they “face unique challenges in modifying their start times.”
Like CCSD, rural district officials are also concerned with the local control question.
Mike Walker, a state board member who is also an elementary school principal in Lyon County and a school board member in the Carson City School District, said start times were complex and needed to be addressed locally.
He said moving back high school start times would affect younger children by forcing elementary schools to start earlier, as buses have to divide their time and staff. The younger students may also have to cross dark country roads in the winter if the times are adjusted, he said.
“I don’t know a school district that isn’t struggling with vacancies in all areas of the school operations, but bus drivers and routes are impacted,” Walker said. “At the school I run, I have paraprofessionals who are transporting students to and from school because there aren’t enough drivers to do a special education route.”
Humboldt County School District Superintendent David Jensen echoed a letter from the Nevada Association of School Superintendents that said the length of the instructional day, union agreements, extracurricular scheduling, transportation availability and “walk zones” — the minimum distance students must live from school to catch a bus — inform start times, and without added resources to address those factors, changing start times could constitute an unfunded mandate.
In sparsely populated Humboldt County, where the county seat and largest community is Winnemucca, some high school students travel as far as 50 miles each way, each day, to get to school.
“As a former state Board of Education member, having served on the state Board for three years, I don’t recall SBOE previously seeking to override local autonomy and
decision-making regarding the provision of education in our communities,” Jensen wrote in a letter to the board. “Were I currently on the Board, I would strongly advise against taking this position and pitting the state Board of Education against local school districts during a time when we should be finding commonality.”
Eureka County School District Superintendent and current state board member Tate Else said superintendents were concerned about unintended consequences of start times coming from the state.
“I don’t think anybody’s opposed to the data or the research beyond that, but I think there are so many other factors that we have to determine and work through,” he said.
However, Diego, a student at Silverado High School in Las Vegas, wrote a letter saying pushing back start times could help with chronic absenteeism, a major issue in CCSD.
Board member Tim Hughes said he noted a split in opinions. He said he understood logistical complications but the board serves students and families.
“There is sort of a bifurcation where we see people who are running systems have a clear opinion and people who are recipients of the system seem to have a different opinion,” he said. “By and large, what we’re hearing from families and students is ‘We want a later start time,’ and what we’re hearing from folks who run the systems is ‘We don’t want a later start time because that’s too complicated.’ ”
Ortiz said that the results of school surveys on current start times and preferred options for adjusting times could be used as justification for schools that apply for a waiver. If schools don’t rely on survey feedback, they will need justifications “that make sense and are
student-focused.”
“If you come to us with a bunch of adult excuses, that may be a justification for us not to approve a waiver,” she said.
Refined regulation language will come back to the state board, with more opportunity for community input, before the board makes a final decision.
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