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To school, perchance to dream

Shakespeare describes sleep as "nature's soft nurse," but forgive Pinellas high school students who might miss that lesson. If it's first period and still dark outside, they may well be snoozing.

Sleep research indicates that the biological clock is pushed later and later during adolescence, but the school bus is arriving earlier and earlier. Students may attend school-sponsored sporting or extracurricular activities as late 11 p.m., only to be expected to rise by 5 a.m. to catch the morning bus for classes that begin at 7:05.

Pinellas is not alone in this educational squeeze, but it has been particularly unresponsive. As administrators have confronted transportation challenges over the years, they too often have allowed the needs of students and families and classroom schedules to take a back seat on this ride. High school students aren't the only ones affected. The two-hour, 40-minute gap between high school and middle school start times is more than double that of Pasco and nearly double that of Hillsborough. More subtly, the bus routing has led any number of elementary schools to dismiss students early in order to accommodate the schedules of drivers.

Pinellas superintendent Clayton Wilcox has asked a consultant to take a fresh look at district bus routes with an eye toward streamlining them. That's a good start, but he also will need to recognize that one of the biggest obstacles is the haphazard pattern of busing that has resulted from the choice student assignment plan. The plan itself increased the number of bus routes by half and has pushed the annual budget to $38-million, less than half of which is reimbursed by the state. Any attempt to bring more efficiency to busing will need to examine the impact of choice.

Getting students to school is only a means to an end. The goal is to teach them, which is hard to do with their eyes closed.

[Last modified September 14, 2005, 02:15:34]