A House panel has advanced a bill reversing a 2023 law over later middle and high school start times.
Democrats chided Republicans for needing the do-over just two years after the original law.
“This is not an I-told-you-so moment,” said Democratic Rep. LaVon Bracy Davis before House Education Administration Subcommittee’s 16-0 vote for HB 261. “This is a great bill, but I really think we need to listen to the people that know best because we wouldn’t have to be here, kind of fixing what we did.”
The 2023 legislation required public middle schools to start by 8 a.m. and high schools to begin by 8:30 a.m. starting July 1, 2026.
However, with the deadline approaching, school leaders warned that they face huge busing costs with the new schedule mandated by Tallahassee and not enough bus drivers. Davis, an Orlando Democrat, warned that her district could get hit with a $4 million expense, for instance.
Having middle and high schools start later could force some elementary students to start school earlier and also affect parents’ work schedules if they rely on older children to watch the younger ones.
Lawmakers originally supported the 2023 legislation to help middle and high school students get more sleep.
“We all understand the science, and the science makes sense, but this is a logistical nightmare,” said Rep. Jeff Holcomb, a Spring Hill Republican, during Wednesday’s debate. “At the end of the day, are we going to send our elementary school students to school at 7 a.m.? There really isn’t a good answer at all to that other than kind of going back to the status quo. We’re listening to our School Boards. We’re listening to our parents.”
The Orange County and Manatee County School Districts and the Greater Florida Consortium of School Boards were among the groups supporting the bill at Wednesday’s hearing.
Rep. Anne Gerwig, who sponsored the bill, had a solution to fix the problem.
“I would suggest, as a parent, that kids could get more sleep if they went to bed earlier,” said the Wellington Republican.
Gerwig’s bill says Florida schools are in compliance with the law if they submit a report to the state that give the start times of schools and the financial impact of later start times, as well as “documentation of strategies the school district considered to implement a later school start time for middle schools and high schools within the school district, including the number of board meetings and public hearings held to discuss the strategies and any parent input the school district received.”
The Senate companion (SB 296) sponsored by Sen. Jennifer Bradley cleared two committee stops already and is scheduled to be brought up Thursday morning at the Fiscal Policy Committee.
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