Governor Brown's Vetoes Require Later School Start Times

SACRAMENTO – California colleges and high schools will not have to wait at least 8:30 am to start classes, as governor Jerry Brown vetoed a bill requiring a later date of departure.

Brown returned Senate Bill 328 to the Legislative Assembly without his signature on Thursday, calling it a "universal solution to which teachers and school boards opposed each other".

The hours at which each school starts classes are the best-managed types of decisions in the local community, the governor said.

It was the argument advanced by the California Teachers Association and some school districts who opposed the bill.

Proponents of the bill argued that later school start times would help the health of students. Children who have to get up early to go to school lose valuable sleep, they say.

The bill was passed last month after a long debate on the last night of the legislative session.

Many districts in the Bay Area begin the school day between 8 and 8:30 am. The law would have exempted rural school districts and allowed schools to continue to have a "zero period" early in the morning for students who want to.

Some districts indicated that subsequent class departures would disrupt bus schedules. Liberty Union High School District in East Contra Costa County, for example, shares buses – as many districts do – with elementary schools that would have been exempted from the law.

Eric Volta, superintendent of Liberty Union, said in August that the district could not afford to buy additional buses to cope with changes in class schedules.

After announcing his veto on Thursday, Volta e-mailed that he "appreciated the Legislature's interest in doing what they think is best for the students, but I'm glad I do not have to implement something that would upset community. "

An analysis prepared by staff of the Assembly Education Commission said the bill would impose "unknown" financial pressures on the state's general fund, likely in millions, to that schools devote time to supervision before school. open their doors at a specific time to accommodate students who must be dropped.

The analysis also notes that costs for local school districts could be "important" if they have to buy additional buses. According to the analysis, the cost of 150 statewide buses would be about $ 10 million.

But proponents of the bill retorted that student sleep was too important for districts to fail to set up logistics. The author of the bill, Senator Anthony Portantino, cited several research studies that support his arguments and his staff last year wrote a book of more than 200 pages to help present this case.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine says teens need to sleep eight to 10 hours each night and anything that is out of the way can lead to poor school performance, obesity, symptoms of depression, injuries and road accidents.

Simply going to bed earlier is not always a solution, sleep scientists say, because teens often have a delayed circadian rhythm and have trouble falling asleep before 11pm.

This is the second time that the bill has not been passed. The one that Portantino introduced in 2017 was shot down by school boards and the state teachers' association.

Demetrio Gonzalez, president of United Teachers of Richmond, said the union would not necessarily be opposed to a change in local school board start times.

Gonzalez said many schools in the unified West Contra Costa County School District needed to open early to help students who were in the school district or were expected to be there early.

"If our school board wanted to research the positive aspects of such a change, I think we would be open to exploring it with them," he said in an email. "If the data can demonstrate that, it would be a good change for the children we would like to know and advocate for such changes."