To the editor:

As a Barrington resident with young children in the district I recently was made aware of the committee's pending plan to change the school start times.  

In a family with two working parents there is often very little time to dedicate to following what is happening at the school committee level and we, like many families in town, rely on our elected representatives to exercise good judgment and fair analysis in carrying out their duties of elected office.  

Buried under the daily responsibilities of work and coaching young kids in soccer, basketball and baseball and raising my own kids I never paid attention to what the school committee was planning to do with regard to changing the school start times. It was a shock for me to learn just a few weeks ago about this plan and all of the deleterious consequences it will cause. 

I decided to attend the information meeting at the high school on Thursday, April 25. At the jam-packed meeting it was quickly apparent that everyone save the school committee was against the idea to change the school times. Students, teachers and parents. It was also apparent the school committee was not interested in listening to the multitude of negative effects this plan would cause. 

At this meeting these were the very real and measurable effects of this plan articulated by attendees:

1. Young children ages 5, 6 and 7 will be required to be at bus stops at 7 a.m. in the morning in complete winter darkness. 

2. All of the children who currently are picked up after school at bus stops by high school students employed in part time child care jobs will no longer be able to go home on the bus. These poor young children will need to go to organized daycare centers, resulting in potential 11-hour days for these kids. 

3. Said high school students employed to watch younger children after school will lose these jobs, which in some cases are important means of earning funds for future college expenditures.  

4. Many of the high school sports teams will lose critical daylight hours during which to practice and play games outside.

5. There will simply not be time for JV games on the same day as varsity games.

6. Swim practice will be scheduled until 9 p.m. on certain nights. So families with a child at the high school on the swim team who also have younger children in bed will be placed in an untenable position; regularly.   

7. Because practice and games will end so late, the coaches who are teachers will lose their opportunity to be home with their own families on weeknights.

8. The new bus routes are planned to be as long as 50 minutes. In a town this small, this is tragic. 

9. The rock bottom minimum cost of this change is $250,000.

If one were to weigh the pros and the cons of this decision on a scale of common sense, with the only pro being the potential (but not provable) hope some high school students will get a few more minutes of sleep each night; and on the other side of the scale the nine disheartening effects enumerated above, the scale would break and the proposal would be laughed out of the room.  

Sadly, it is evident that common sense was excused from the room when this plan was conceived. It is also evident that special interests pushing for this change have hi-jacked the school committee election process to the detriment of the teachers, students and families of this town.   

The the will of the vast majority of our teachers, students and families is being thwarted.

The school committee does not want to ask for any of the above groups to vote on this issue, because they know this is the truth. What is the harm in holding a vote on this issue and letting democracy speak and justice prevail?

Best regards,

John Palmieri

Barrington