Manatee County School District creates survey on school start times

BRADENTON -- Students, parents and community members can now provide feedback on potential changes to school start times through a Manatee County School District survey.

At a recent school Manatee County School Board workshop, members discussed advantages and disadvantages to changing school start times. The district released the survey Thursday.

The survey can be found at manateeschools.net under the "hot topics" tab.

The three-question survey asks people to identify which group they fall into -- student, parent or community member -- allows them to identify schools they are affiliated with and gives three start times options.

The first option is to keep established start times: High school starts at 7:30 a.m. and ends at 2:05 p.m., middle school starts at 9:20 a.m. and ends at 3:40 p.m. and elementary school starts at 8:20 a.m. and ends at 2:50 p.m.

The second option is to keep the same start times but switch the order. Middle school would start at 7:30 a.m., high school would start at 8:20 a.m. and elementary school would start at 9:20 a.m.

The final option would delay all the start times by 30 minutes so high school would begin at 8 a.m., middle would start at 9:50 a.m. and elementary would start at 8:50 a.m.

Survey results will be presented to the board at a future date.

Meghin Delaney, education reporter, can be reached at 941-745-7081. Follow her on Twitter@MeghinDelaney.

This story was originally published November 19, 2015 at 5:43 PM with the headline "Manatee County School District creates survey on school start times ."