If you haven’t seen it already, the Sayreville Board of Education had proposed new start and end times for the Sayreville War Memorial High School (along with the Middle School, and elementary schools). The new start time was proposed to be 8:30 am, and the end time to be 3:12 pm (to make up for the hour lost).

The reason for the hour delay is backed up by studies, proposing that teenagers perform better in school when they obtain more sleep. But what does the community think?

Well, the majority of the people that I’ve asked seemed to have complained. The main concern regarding students is after school activities will have to be pushed into later times, and so the “extra” hour would be lost anyway since all of their activities are pushed back longer. In addition, many students use their parents as their transportation, and with the new times, the parents won’t be able to get around their work schedule to drive them to school.

One student even offered suggestions, as they stated, “Instead, what they should do, is reduce the time we are in school. That proved to be productive during virtual as the classes were short and we were able to finish work early. And, the other option is to let teachers reduce the amount of work in general. Since we do not have block periods, we have every class every single day.”

Even many of the teachers disagreed with the new times, as many of them have children and need to be home at an appropriate time (since not all of them live in Sayreville), and it would conflict with their evening activities as well.

As of April 18, they have decided not to apply the new times. However, this probably won’t be the last time we see these proposed times. After all, the reasoning behind the new times was due to an N.J. bill, proposing that high schools be no earlier than 8:30 a.m., which would start in the 2024-25 school year if passed.

What did you think about the new times?