APS says new start times will be good for high schoolers. But not all elementary school parents are happy.

After years of going back and forth, Albuquerque Public Schools unveiled a slate of new bell schedules for schools in mid-April, which the district touted as a research-based way of improving outcomes for teenagers.

But the move didn’t sit well with everyone — especially for some families at Bandelier Elementary School.

In June, several parents of the Southeast Heights school — which saw one of the most drastic time changes of any elementary school in the district — voiced their concerns to the school board, chief among them the heavy blow the school’s new bell schedule could strike on their students’ schedules and wellbeing.

“My little 6½-year-old daughter needs 12 hours of sleep. So that means she’ll have to go to bed at 6 or 6:30 (p.m.) to wake up for this new start time,” Julia Hyams, a Bandelier parent, told the Journal in an interview after the June 7 meeting.

“It just feels like a bait and switch, like, ‘Do you want middle and high schoolers to succeed? … Good, we do, too. And now let’s forget about the elementary students,’” she added.

Hyams, along with other Bandelier parents, also expressed concerns over the possibility of being forced to walk their children to school in the dark to make it in time for the school’s new 7:30 a.m. start time, and that the new hours — which lengthen the school day, cutting into teachers’ paid time used for duty — may drive away teachers.

“We fought to keep kids at our school through COVID, and all of the teachers that wanted to leave and (had) finally gotten everything working together and teachers happy,” Sarah Voglewede, another Bandelier parent, said. “And now they’re about to rock the boat.”

When deciding bell schedules, the district did have conversations about the impact on staff, Superintendent Scott Elder told the Journal. But at the end of the day, he said the district is “about student outcomes,” and that bell schedule decisions weren’t made on individual schools.

“We had to make (decisions) based on the general idea that we wanted to start high school at a later start,” Elder said. “When you begin with that premise, then you have the secondary considerations that come in, such as transportation. … So there was no thought of ‘What will this do for this individual school?’”

The conversation over adjusting school start and end times went on for a long time — more than a decade, Elder said — before the district finally pulled the trigger. Part of why the district opted to swap earlier start times to elementary schools is that younger students tend to do better earlier in the morning than older students, he said.

Even so, Elder acknowledged the transition will be a difficult one for the Bandelier community.

“I appreciate the parents coming forward and sharing their concerns. … However, there are other communities that have adjusted to that start time,” he added. “I do recognize this is a big shift for that school.”

Under bell schedule changes, Bandelier’s start time will be bumped up from 9 a.m. to 7:30 a.m.

Bandelier is one of about 35 elementary schools that will start classes at 7:30 a.m. No elementary schools started that early last school year, according to past bell schedules posted to the district website.

Bandelier’s hour-and-a-half jump is also one of the most drastic of all the district’s elementary schools. When comparing school start times of the most recent school year with those for the coming year, only four other elementary schools — of the district’s almost-90 — will see classes begin earlier by as much as or slightly more than Bandelier.

In an ideal world, the district would be able to start school at the same time for everyone, Elder said.

But that ideal world is precluded by APS’ ongoing struggles with having enough bus drivers to get everyone to school on time, he said. That’s part of why the district staggered bell schedules so that elementary, middle and high schools tend to start at different times.

And because bus schedules are staggered, adjusting the start time of just one school has a domino effect for other schools, Elder said.

Though Elder has said the district has enough drivers to cover the bell schedule plan for the coming school year, APS does currently have around 25 bus driver openings, according to a district spokeswoman.

The district’s busing woes, though, didn’t seem to stop Bandelier parents from feeling they’re getting the short end of the stick.

“It seems like they’re erring on the side of allowing the high school (students) to go to school later because that’s the research, but they’re not following the research then for elementary school — just kind of falling in line because of the bus issues,” Voglewede said. “We want to support the district. But we want to feel like they’re listening to us and supporting us.”

School board member Barbara Petersen, who represents the board district that covers Bandelier, said she met with school community members in late June to discuss their concerns.

But her points closely mirrored Elder’s in that while she understands the community’s concerns, “the problem with the start times is that with the number of buses and drivers we have, it’s like a house of cards,” she said.

“Definitely, they were disappointed that there wasn’t a change,” she said. “I think they understood that there are things that we can’t fix in the short run.”

Bandelier parents still feel they’re waiting for a resolution. But while Elder said the district will keep looking at start times throughout the school year, he reiterated that this is something that will just take some time to get used to.

“The start times will take a little while to get adjusted to,” Elder said. “But they’ll adjust.”