BPS cancels start-time changes

School Superintendent Tommy Chang announced today he's scrubbing plans to start more elementary kids earlier and high-school kids later for the coming school year.

Over the past few weeks, we have heard from families, staff, and stakeholders that there are concerns with the implementation of the new start and end times policy. After reflecting on this feedback, we understand that while the new schedule would achieve our goal of supporting academic success for all ages, the shifts to many school start times caused a more significant disruption to family schedules than we intended. That is why I have decided not to implement the new start and end times that we have proposed for the 2018-2019 school year.

As Superintendent of the Boston Public Schools, I am deeply committed to joining together with the broader community to get this right and to invest our time in solving these complex issues.

Going forward, we will focus our efforts on continued and improved engagement with all of our families and community members to solve the problems necessary to build a more coherent school system. This includes developing a new schedule of start and end times for future school years that is grounded in equity and better meets the needs of our students and families. We must share a collaborative spirit, and work together to find solutions to repair the institutional inequities that persist.

After the changes were announced, parents of elementary-school students who might have to be in school by 7 a.m. began increasingly vociferous protests - even at a Christmas-tree lighting in West Roxbury. Protests continued at meetings called by BPS this week; parents were also planning a protest outside Mayor Walsh's re-inauguration on Jan. 1.