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The Nevada State Board of Education on Wednesday approved implementation of its regulation to set guidelines and guardrails for high school start times in all school districts and charter schools as of the 2025-26 school year. The board also will seek additional community input and data in the process.
However, there are more steps to occur before actual implementation takes place.
According to Nevada Deputy Attorney General David Gardner, the regulation is to be submitted to the Legislative Counsel Bureau’s legal division to review and revise it as needed for compatibility with the Nevada Administrative Code. It is then returned to the State Board to hold another public hearing and further decide on the language. If the board approves the language again, it sends it to the 12-member Legislative Commission for approval, at which point it becomes an official regulation, Gardner said.
Since the last board meeting, the draft language was updated to reflect that it addresses high schools in particular and changes the gradual implementation plan from 25% of high schools to 35% of high schools to provide alternative start times in the first year of implementation.
The issue of school start times slowly has gained traction among school districts and the public this past year as the NDE began examining the issue in workshops. The American Academy of Pediatricians in August 2014 had recommended that middle and high schools start at 8:30 a.m. or later to make sure students are receiving an adequate amount of sleep. According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, the average start time for schools in Nevada is between 7:45 and 8:15 a.m. from data collected from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The board on Wednesday received a significant amount of public comment on the matter prior to discussion. Carson City Superintendent Andrew Feuling, representing the Nevada Association of School Superintendents, said the organization wished to reaffirm its view that school start times should remain a matter of local control despite national studies while acknowledging the importance of student wellness and sleep as shown in research.
“We firmly believe that decisions regarding school start times should lie within the purview of local districts considering their unique needs and communities they serve,” Feuling said. “Numerous operational constraints affect the times at which schools start in the morning, including the length of the instructional day, availability of transportation, collective bargaining agreements, walk zones and sizes and extracurricular and athletic scheduling.”
Members Tim Hughes and Tate Else were concerned the board had not collected enough information and needed to conduct a statewide survey to understand districts’ needs to avoid “unintended consequences,” referring to past meetings and seeking to avoid future challenges.
“I like the idea, as much as I hate to collect more data, but I think we need more data on this and I’ve been scouring data,” said Else, Eureka County School District superintendent. “Some of our lowest performing schools have the highest chronic absenteeism data.”
Member Maggie Carlton, Assemblywoman, D-Clark, said she wasn’t convinced the board was “doing the right thing” approving the regulation.
“We have finally in the last couple of meetings gotten some attention on this,” Carlton said. “The longer we drag this out, the less of the other work we’re going to get done. … Regulations can be rewritten numerous times. Sooner or later we’ve got to get this done and do something else.”
Member Mike Walker, a principal in Lyon County School District and representative for the National Association of School Boards, said it appears to be a simplistic issue to be able to swap elementary and high school times, a solution presented in prior meetings, and agreed more data is needed.
“When I speak to NASB, several districts feels they have not been included in this discussion,” Walker said. “One of the most important things is we have to move with our school districts, and if we don’t have them at the table with and finding solutions that are solving these problems, we’re continually doing something to school boards and school districts and schools that are making complex jobs that are even more difficult and sometimes a little bit impossible.”
The motion passed with Hughes abstaining.