Metro Nashville Board of Education Questions Plans to Change School Start Times

Members of the MNPS Board of Education (Photo by MNPS)

Proposals to change the school start and stop times for Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) found mixed reactions from members of the Board of Education on Tuesday night.

A consultant hired by the district unveiled two proposals (the Squeeze and the Shift) to alter the existing start times earlier this month. The Squeeze would move high school start and dismissal times back by 20 minutes and elementary school times back by ten minutes. This option would not impact middle school start times. The Shift would move the start times for all grades, including middle schoolers, forward by 15 minutes.

MNPS will also consider leaving start times as they currently are.

The district began evaluating potential changes to school start times last year, in part because of concerns that the 7:05 a.m. start time for most high schools might be too early.

District 3 Board Member Zach Young questioned whether either proposal truly addresses those concerns at Tuesday’s board meeting.

“I feel like I’m a long way from being convinced that this exercise has been useful at this point, because we have two models presented that are twenty minutes and change,” said Young. “I’m just not convinced that we’re going to make the lives of our students better, the outcomes better by making a 20-minute change.”

Busing and Parent Feedback Considered

Consultants with 4Mativ said they tried to avoid creating transportation challenges when crafting both start time proposals.

District Chief of Communications and Technology Sean Braisted told board members on Tuesday that busing challenges, along with community feedback, ultimately took other potential proposals off the table, including squeezing all start times even closer together, swapping start times to give high schools a later start, or offering a range of start times within school clusters.

“Some of those options required additional buses or drivers, which is not really realistic in the near term. Others created too much disruption for too many families or conflicted with what stakeholders said mattered the most,” said Braisted. “The three models…balanced benefit, feasibility, and community impact.”

Transportation Concerns Remain

Still, multiple board members questioned the potential impact on busing with both proposals.

“My particular concern was with potential behavior on buses, if the kids are on the buses longer, what are we thinking about for in support of bus drivers who may not have monitors,” asked District 6 Board Member Cheryl Mays.

MNPS’s exceptional education buses currently do have bus monitors, but most general education buses don’t. Superintendent Dr. Adrienne Battle suggested that changing start times might make it possible to add bus monitors, but those details have not been worked out yet.

State law prohibits school bus travel time to no more than an hour and a half in the morning or afternoon.

District 2 Board Member Rachael Anne Elrod said the support for altering start times is split 50-50 in her district, and she implored MNPS leaders to provide more details on how each proposal would impact busing.

“I would just like to have it more clear so that I’m not making an assumption what those changes would be, particularly, we’re not a transportation-friendly city. We don’t have mass transit. We don’t have any sidewalks,” said Elrod.

Parents Encouraged to Participate in the Next Steps

MNPS has held four in-person town halls, two virtual town halls, and stakeholder focus groups to gather feedback on the proposals to change start times. Parents are additionally encouraged to provide input on the plans through an online survey that will run through Friday.

District leaders plan to use that feedback to make a start time recommendation for the board to consider at its January 27 meeting.