Manhattan High students won’t have to wake up as early next school year.
In a 5-2 vote on Dec. 17, the USD 383 Board of Education approved a proposal to start class at 8 a.m. and end at 3:10 p.m., 20 minutes later than the current start time of 7:40 a.m. and end of 2:50 p.m. The changes take effect at the start of the 2026-2027 school year.
MHS counselor Dustin Duntz, a member of the committee that created the proposal, sees the 8 a.m. window as the “sweet spot” for accommodating sleep schedules in the morning and extracurriculars in the afternoon, expressing that it is “not too early, not too late.”
The changes come into play as part of the three-tier busing system– where elementary, middle, and high schools start and end separately for transportation efficiency.
Under the new proposal, Elementary start times shift to 7:30-2:30, more than an hour before their old window of 8:45-3:45.
“They put a lot of weight into studies that show that the older students need to start later,” Duntz said. “And there’s a lot of teachers, elementary teachers, that expressed that the elementary students really do not learn well after noon. So elementary students being earlier, I think fits in well with what our teachers have seen in our district, and what the research shows.”
The middle schools and early learning centers, which previously started and ended at the same time as high school, now will hold the latest slot: 8:40-3:50.
“I think the reason that the Board did not put high school at 8:30 is because of the distance that our teams have traveled for sports, meaning they may need to leave school earlier than middle schoolers do to travel for sports,” Duntz said.
The final decision comes after the Board was headed in a completely different direction at the Dec. 3 meeting.
During this meeting, they proposed that high school begin at 7:30, middle school at 8:05 and elementary school at 8:50.
However, the Board scrapped this plan in their final decision on Dec. 17.
“Every action item takes two votes,” Duntz said. “So [Dec. 3] their initial vote was that time, and then [on Dec. 17], they went back and changed back to voting yes to what our recommendation was.”
