POTSDAM — Potsdam Central School will hold two community forums this spring to present three options to change the school start time for middle and high school students.

The school board has been exploring the feasibility of shifting start times to be better aligned with the recommendations sleep experts.

The school has scheduled two community forums – Thursday, March 28 and Monday, April 8. School officials will review the process they followed over the last few years, present options, answer questions, and gather feedback.

"There is a mountain of scientific evidence supporting a later school start time for high school students,” according to PCS Superintendent Joann Chambers. “The Board of Education and the District have worked together for the past four years to determine a school start schedule that maximizes the benefits and minimizes the negative impacts of a potential change. However, the Board has not yet made any decisions regarding the options that have been presented. Ultimately, the Board will consider feedback from our community as well as recommendations from outside experts to make a decision that is in the best interest of all students."

Last week, the Board was presented with all of the options school officials have been able to come up with.

They are: 1. Move to a single bus run, with all three schools opening at essentially the same time.

2. Start all three schools later than they do now (we’ve looked at both 25 and 45 minutes later).

3. Reverse the order of the school starts, with the elementary school opening first.

The single-bus run scenario may not be seen as a viable option. Officials are finalizing a cost analysis, and it is believed it will be more than our community will be willing to accept. There are other challenges with this option, including the CSEA contract, the shortage of bus drivers, and the concern of having elementary students riding the bus with older kids.

Chambers is also anticipating that starting all three schools later will not be acceptable.

“The 25-minute later option is very problematic at the high school due to the time constraints imposed by students who attend a program at Seaway Tech,” she said.

The 45-minutes later start would have the elementary buses leaving Lawrence Avenue at 3:55 p.m.

“I think that will raise significant concerns,” Chambers said.

That leaves PCS with the option of the elementary starting first.

“We have considered many variations of the start and end times to see if we could come up with a schedule that wouldn’t have our youngest students on the buses too early but would still have school starting late enough for our middle and high school students to provide the benefits we are anticipating,” Chambers said.

The schedule officials have developed would have elementary students arriving at 7:40 a.m. and the instructional day beginning at 8 a.m. This schedule would be within 5 minutes of the start times at 7 other elementary schools in the county.

With this schedule, the middle school instructional day would be 8:35 a.m. 3:15 p.m. and the high school day would be 8:25 a.m. until 3:05 p.m.