Jefferson County Public Schools is also considering shifting the start times for many of its students under a new proposal called Start Smart.

The district would grow from just two start times to eight.

The first bell would vary from 740 to 9:40 a.m. for K through 12 students.

Most middle and high schools would have a later start time.

Last night, Superintendent Dr. Marty Pollio explained why he thinks the change is needed.

There are several reasons we're going to talk about changing.

First and foremost is our driver shortage.

I want to reiterate this is not just a JCPenney's issue.

This is a national issue that includes urban, rural and suburban districts all across America that have a shortage of bus drivers right now.

We have more bus routes every single day than we have bus drivers.

What that means is kids getting late to school every single day and losing instructional hours.

This is 20,000 students at every level, in every corner of the community that are being impacted by late busses at nearly every school with 3000000 minutes of instruction being lost.

We will close in by the end of the school year at nearly 5000000 minutes of instructional minutes lost as a result of late busses.

There have been a pile of research studies that have been done that shows later start times for adolescent students.

Grades six through 12 positively impacts attendance.

The research is very clear on the negative health impacts of students if they start school that early in the morning.

We cannot continue to do that.

This is what most districts have come to, where they have made this change many decades ago and have a multitude of start times.

We have studied other districts and found we are one of the only ones that has not made that change.

And it is time now to do that.

So we're going to do this work to make sure that we minimize impacts on families.

But I think the compelling data is in front of us.

These are things that we must change, we must address to make sure that the students in Jefferson County public schools are successful.

So, yes, it's hard change, but it is mandatory change that we must make for our district to be successful.

Dr. Polio will present the proposal to the Jefferson County Board of Education in March.

If approved, the changes would begin at the start of the 2023 24 school year.