The Port Alden school board voted 5-2 Monday night to delay a later start time for high schools by a year, keeping the 7:45 a.m. bell through the coming school year while the district renegotiates its bus contract.
The board approved the later, 8:30 a.m. start in principle last spring, following research showing teenagers do better with more sleep in the morning. But the district's bus contractor said it could not add the extra routes a staggered schedule requires without a new agreement, and that agreement is not ready. A staggered schedule, under which elementary schools would start earlier to free up buses for a later high school run, needs roughly a dozen additional routes the district does not currently have drivers for.
"We still believe in the later start," said board president Owen Castellano. "We do not believe in changing the bell schedule without a bus plan that actually gets kids to school. A later start that leaves a third of our students without a reliable ride is not a win for anyone."
Two board members, Alicia Ferrante and Devon Marsh, voted against the delay, arguing the district had a full year to solve the bus problem and used the time poorly.
"We knew this was coming in the spring," Ferrante said. "A year is not a short runway, and I don't think the district treated it like one until the last few months, when the contract deadline was already close."
District officials said the bus contractor, Coastway Transit, wants a rate increase tied to fuel costs before it will commit to the added routes. Negotiations are expected to resume in the new year, with a goal of implementing the later start the following fall. Superintendent Lena Vartan said the district was also exploring whether a smaller local operator could take on a portion of the added routes to reduce its reliance on Coastway.
Parents at the meeting were split. Several said they had already adjusted family schedules around the promised change and were frustrated by the delay. Others said they would rather wait a year than risk a schedule with unreliable buses, recalling a rocky rollout of a similar change in a neighboring district two years ago that left some students waiting at stops for buses that never arrived.
