GUILDERLAND — After this year’s attempt to let high school students get the sleep that science shows they require, the Guilderland schools will return in the fall to the same start times the district used before the pandemic.

The high school will start at 7:30 a.m. for a day that lasts six hours and 53 minutes. The district’s five elementary schools will start at 7:50 a.m for a day that lasts six hours. And Farnsworth Middle School will start at 8:45 a.m. for a day that lasts six hours and 40 minutes.

On May 3, school board members had been presented with three options for start times but at their May 24 meeting, the board members, by a vote of 8 to 1, chose a fourth option — returning to the original pre-pandemic configuration.

The meeting had opened with Guilderland sophomore Kayleigh Green explaining, as a high school student had told the board nearly 20 years before, that on average a teenager should sleep nine hours and 15 minutes.

“Biology works against adolescent sleep,” she said, explaining that circadian rhythms make it hard for teens to fall asleep before 11 p.m. — so going to bed earlier won’t work.

Green named a number of area schools with a later start time and questioned why Guilderland would follow the science for mask-wearing and vaccination but not for sleep times.

The most recent Guilderland committee has spent four years wrestling with the topic, concluding later high school start times are best for mental health and academic success. However, the logistics of implementing that schedule proved problematic.

While almost all of the board members who voted for the pre-pandemic start times acknowledged the validity of the science, they said reality didn’t allow for it.

A combination of geography — the district is nearly 60 square miles with seven schools — heavy traffic on several major routes, and a nationwide shortage of bus drivers led to problems with students not arriving at school on time this year.

The district, which has no central campus, uses a three-tiered system where buses service each level — elementary, middle, and high school — separately.

“The high school buses were never able to all arrive on time,” said Superintendent Marie Wiles at the May 3 meeting.

High school Principal Michael Piscitelli said then that the late bus arrivals this year “created a laissez-faire attitude about the start of school.”

On May 24, only school board member Barbara Fraterrigo advocated for a plan with a later high school start time.

Fraterrigo, who had run in the May election with a slate that was defeated, favored the model where elementary schools would start first.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Fraterrigo said, ask school districts not to start before 8:30 a.m. “The trend is to recognize science,” she said, naming Albany and Schenectady as school districts with later high school start times.

Board member Judy Slack said that, if the elementary students were to start first, they would be catching school buses in the dark, which she called “totally unacceptable.”

Board member Kimberly Blasiak said she didn’t want to disregard parents. “Realistically, it’s not easy to find child care,” she said, asking, “What do people do” if they can’t find child care. “They don’t go to work,” she said.

By starting high school late, board President Seema Rivera said, “You’re going to impact sports and jobs. You can’t have both.”

Board member Blanca Parker-Gonzalez said she was disappointed to have to choose between “blatantly disregarding the science” or pitting the students against each other.

Board member Rebecca Butterfiled cited “certain immutable conditions we can’t ignore.” She also said, “If we could wave a magic wand, all of the students would start between 8 and 8:30.”

Board Vice President Gloria Towle-Hilt said of the need for high school students to get more sleep, “In trying to solve that, we’ve created all these other issues.”

“With all the options, someone’s going to get hurt,” said board member Nathan Sabourin. He concluded, “The pre-pandemic option is the one that really does hurt the least.” 

He also said that the school districts which Green and Fraterrigo had referenced with later high school start times were geographically different from Guilderland.

“When you make a mistake,” he urged, “don’t double down and make it worse.”

“As horrible as it is …. It’s the only one that seems to work,” said board member Kelly Person of the pre-pandemic plan.

Wiles said of the newly adopted plan, the “big downside” is a 25-minute gap at the high school — from 7:05 to 7:30 a.m. — between the time students are dropped off at school to the time when teachers report for work.

There is a similar gap at the end of the day, from 2:23 p.m. when classes end to 2:45 p.m. when buses are boarded.

“It’s also a very dangerous time,” Wiles said, which is when most of the referrals for discipline are made.

“It’s worse in the afternoon than the morning because sleepiness has been our friend in that respect,” Wiles said.

Of the morning gap, she said, “There’s not enough bodies in the building to supervise all those hundreds of students getting off the bus.”

It is as difficult to hire and retain monitors, who could supervise students, as it is to hire bus drivers, she said.

“We’ve got to think through how to make that less bad,” Wiles concluded of the morning and afternoon gaps at the high school caused by the newly adopted schedule.