On Thursday, Feb. 3, members of the Hopkins district school board and HHS’ Student Government met to discuss a change that could immensely affect Hopkins students: school start times.

As of now, the district is separated into three tiers that each have their own school start times and end times.

The first tier includes the secondary schools, HHS and North and West Junior High, which all start at 7:47 am and end at 2:35 pm. The second tier includes Eisenhower Elementary, Glen Lake Elementary, and Tanglen Elementary, which all start at 8:58 am and end at 3:30 pm. The third tier includes Alice Smith Elementary, Meadowbrook Elementary, and Gatewood Elementary, which all start at 9:33 am and end at 4:05 pm.

The school board has come up with four options, all of which would allow for later start times in the secondary schools.

Option one would move all schools, both secondary and elementary, 25 minutes later. However, members of the school board expressed concerns that the time change would not be good for the lunch schedule and elementary school students would be getting home too late.

Option two would move the first tier schools’ start time to the second tier schools’ start time of 8:58 am, and the second tier start time to 7:20 am. The third tier schools’ start time would be moved to 9:55 am. This option created concern over one elementary school starting too early and others starting too late.

Option three would be to move the all secondary school’s start times to 8:10 am and all the elementary schools would begin at 9:10 am. While the change in time would work well for the elementary schools’ schedule, the change in time would not be significant to the secondary school students. Also, by having all elementary schools start at the same time, the amount of running buses would increase, which also increases the transportation budget to 434,000 dollars.

Option four would require all the start times for elementary schools to be moved to 7:40 am and the secondary schools to be changed to 8:42 am. The school board believes the option would, again, be good for lunch schedules, but would again push the transportation budget to 434,000 dollars.

Derrick Agate, Transportation, stated during the meeting that he believes the start times for all schools in the district are productive with the current method.  

“I might add that our tiers that we have currently are very efficient. To come up with a [new] plan will cost a lot because of efficiency we have in place,” Agate said.

Other concerns that were addressed during the meeting were the lack of students who would take advantage of later start times if options two or four were to be chosen.

Ian Baxter, Student Government sophomore representative, stated during the meeting that he had discussed the possible change in start times with his friends and they all agreed that students, especially secondary, would use the later start time as an excuse to stay up later.

“[Changing the start time] is a good idea in theory, but if we start school thirty minutes later, a lot of kids would be going to bed thirty minutes later,” Baxter said. “[Students] will be making up for lost time.”

Baxter also brought up questions about later start times affecting students who participate in after-school programs. Agate explained that by changing the secondary’s start times to a later hour would affect students who participate in after school sports in the Lindbergh Center.

“We have a relationship with the city of Minnetonka [who owns] the Lindbergh Center, and a start time could affect [practices] which could go later,” Agate said. “It could also affect the [time] used for our community.”

The school board has yet to make a decision regarding a change in start and end times for the schools in the district, but it was stated by a member of the school board that the issue will continue to be discussed in further meetings.