BATON ROUGE — At the last school board meeting of the 2024-2025 school year, the EBR School Board approved new start times for six schools within the district, and also approved the budget for next school year.

The six schools included for the pilot program include: Capitol Elementary, Capitol High, Glen Oaks High, Glen Oaks Park Elementary, Melrose Elementary and Merrydale Elementary.

The middle and high schools will start later at 8:50 a.m. and end at 4:05 p.m., while the elementary schools would start earlier at 8 a.m. and end at 3:15 p.m.

"Two areas in North Baton Rouge, we looked at truancy, we looked at attendance, academic performance," EBR Superintendent Lamont Cole said.

The elementary schools would start 25 minutes earlier. The secondary schools would start an hour and 40 minutes later. Cole says data from the American Academy of Pediatrics and other health experts support a later start time for students.

At last week's meeting, several spoke in favor of the time change. But at Thursday's meeting, one Glen Oaks High School teacher voiced concerns with the time shift's impact on personal lives.

"Nobody wants to start school at 8:50, we have other jobs, school, our children's school, how are we supposed to take our kids to the dentist, if we have elderly parents, what if we have to pick them up from the doctor's office?", Ahrianne Smith said.

Cole said the decision was made with students in mind.

"We thought about what's best for students, not so much what's best for adults, but we thought about what's best for students," Cole said.

Cole added the program will be monitored week to week, month to month, measuring student and staff attendance, school discipline, grades and transport times.

"Based on the numbers, if we see truancy go down, if we see academics rise, if we see attendance rise, anything is possible when you're working to make decisions that will meet students where they can best be successful," Cole said.

Cole said if the program is successful, phase two could begin the following school year, but could potentially begin as early as January 2026. It has not been decided which schools or how many would be part of phase two.

Many school board members supported the new start times.

"It would be beneficial for us to at least try a pilot or an initiative to see whether or not this helps with our academic achievement, with our student success," EBR School Board Member Carla Powell-Lewis said.