About 1,800 students started classes Wednesday morning at Heritage High School — bright and not so early.
Heritage was one of the buildings that introduced a new schedule this year in Evergreen Public Schools, which narrowly averted a strike when unionized teachers voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to approve a new contract after months of negotiations.
Under the new schedule, classes start at 8:40 a.m. at Evergreen, Heritage, Mountain View and Union high schools so students can sleep in later. Last year, classes started at 7:45 a.m.
“It’s just science,” Heritage Principal Derek Garrison said as students flowed past him in the hallway. “We hope to improve our attendance rate, and their academic mindset in the morning.”
“Research shows that by shifting start times at the high school level, missed days and tardiness are reduced and academic success improves,” Superintendent John Deeder said in a district publication.
The newsletter cited a recent report by the American Academy of Pediatrics that supports pushing back school start times for teens. Evidence is mounting about how chronic sleep loss takes a toll on the health, safety and performance of adolescents, according to the report.
There also is “compelling data supporting the fact that delaying school start times is a very important intervention that can mitigate some of the impact of sleep loss,” according to Dr. Judith Owens, lead author of the report. Owens is director of sleep medicine at Children’s National Medical Center.
Evergreen is one of the first districts in the region to make the change, officials said. Administrators will track the impact of the schedule shift on a month-to-month basis, Garrison said.
“I think it’s great,” Heritage senior Christopher Tellez said, but he’s also thinking about its ripple effects.
The later start means that classes end at 3:10 p.m. — 55 minutes later than they did last year.
Tellez is involved in a lot of Timberwolf activities and extracurricular activities. It wasn’t unusual for him to put in 15 hours on campus last year, including a zero-period choir class offered before the school day even started.
With sports, “I would get home at 8:30 or 9,” he said.
Now Tellez is wondering if that will turn into 9:30 or 10 p.m.
Garrison, the Heritage principal, said that he is asking his sports coaches to be creative as they deal with their team members.
“They’re students before they’re athletes,” the principal said.
The district also changed the start times of its elementary and middle schools by five to 10 minutes. The shifts didn’t require much in the way of resources, said Gail Spolar, district spokeswoman.
“We had to buy a couple more buses, but we were going to buy them anyway. We won’t retire the old ones as soon as we would have,” Spolar said.
Classes started Wednesday morning at Evergreen, Green Mountain, Hockinson, La Center, Vancouver and Woodland districts. School starts Sept. 6 in Camas, Sept. 7 in Battle Ground and Washougal. Classes begin on three start dates in Ridgefield: Grades 1 through 7 and 9 started Tuesday; grades 8, 10, 11 and 12 started Wednesday; and kindergarten starts today.
Innovation centers
Heritage also is part of another districtwide initiative. It is the only high school among seven schools chosen as innovation centers.
They will test new ideas and technology and develop plans to teach other schools how to use those ideas.
The six other innovation centers are at: Fisher’s Landing, Hearthwood, Orchards and York elementary schools; and Covington and Frontier middle schools.
“Fifteen teachers will be trail blazers” at Heritage, Garrison said. “They have a lot of freedom to try new things in instruction, technology and curriculum.”
Their findings will help the district bring digital devices to all students next year. The goal is personalized learning, tailored to a student’s particular learning style.
Resource centers
Evergreen will have four new family community resource centers this year at Fircrest, Hearthwood, Pioneer and Sunset elementary schools.
It puts a family community resource center at each of the district’s Title I elementary schools. At those schools, federal money assists local districts in meeting the needs of at-risk and low-income students.
The resource centers also are supported by community partners, including Share, the Clark County Food Bank, faith-based organizations and the Evergreen School District Foundation.
About 47 percent of the district’s students receiving free or reduced-price lunches last school year.
Supplies, fees
Families of students from preschool through fifth grade no longer will have to go shopping for a long list of school supplies. The district will provide classroom supplies for all elementary schools.
Students at the middle and high schools will still need to bring school supplies, depending on their classes. However, most fees will no longer be charged — including participation fees for sports and performing arts programs.
The district will fund the move with local levy money that had been used to pay for all-day kindergarten, which now is funded by the state.
Cascadia Tech
The county’s career-skills site has a new title and a new leader. The Clark County Skills Center has been renamed Cascadia Tech Academy.
The academy is supported by the eight school districts in Clark County, and hosted by the Evergreen district.
Mark Mansell is interim director. He recently retired after 11 years as the superintendent of the La Center School District.
Karin Duffy left at the end of the 2015-2016 school year because of a family move to Spokane, and now is director of the skill center there.
