Sleepy start to school for 4,000 St. Paul elementary students on buses before 7 a.m. – St. Paul Pioneer Press

After going to bed around 9 p.m. all summer, Mae Shanafelt turned in at 7:45 Monday night to prepare for an early start to the school year.

Her dad, Paul, woke her up early Tuesday. But she got enough sleep, right?

“Uh-uh,” she disagreed while waiting for her 7:03 a.m. bus to Chelsea Heights Elementary.

The second-grader is one of around 9,000 St. Paul Public Schools elementary students starting class at 7:30 a.m. as part of a start time swap that will give older students more time to sleep.

Experts say teenagers’ natural sleep cycle makes it difficult to fall asleep in time to get enough rest for early-morning classes. Younger kids are more adaptable.

But that doesn’t mean Tuesday morning was easy.

Mae spent her first years of school at Nokomis Montessori, which started at 9:30 each morning.

“This is quite an adjustment,” her father said.

Her mom, Amy, is a “huge proponent” of later starts for teens. A research project manager at the University of Minnesota, she said one of her studies explored why many high schoolers don’t eat breakfast. She found teens just aren’t hungry because “their bodies aren’t ready to be up that early.”

Preparing for an early start — and end — to her daughter’s school day has been stressful, however. The couple finally learned about the city’s free — for now — after-school Rec Check and snagged the last spot.

3,900 GET BUS BEFORE 7 A.M.

Many students, especially those traveling several miles to magnet schools, face an even longer school day.

According to the school district, buses are scheduled to pick up:

• 1,103 students between 6:30 and 6:44 a.m.;
• 2,839 between 6:45 and 6:59 a.m.; and
• 3,079 after 7 a.m.

Offered a twilight bus ride to J.J. Hill Magnet at 6:33 a.m., Sara Drake is instead driving her second grader to school to maximize sleep.

“She doesn’t even get up by 6:30,” she said.

Drake said her daughter loves her Montessori school, but she’s now on waitlists for two charter schools because of the new start times.

“I think 7:30 is too early for anyone,” she said.

Early starts are nothing new for Victoria Dames, whose daughters just switched from a 7:45 a.m. private school to the 7:30 Chelsea Heights. She used to drop her daughters off at 4 a.m. at a home near the old school in order to get to work by 6.

“I was actually kind of relieved” by the 7:30 start, she said. “It’s less of a change.”

Fifth-grader Mia and third-grader Sylvia Colis-Dames were outside Tuesday a half-hour before their scheduled 7 a.m. bus pickup. It would be Sylvia’s first time taking a bus to school.

“It feels like I’m taking a field trip every day,” she said.

MORE START LATER

Roughly 14,000 students now start school an hour later.

That includes nearly all middle and high schools, which now start around 8:30. The exception is Washington Technology Magnet, which gets going at 7:20 to preserve the extra hour in its day.

The average St. Paul district student will start at 8:29 a.m., seven minutes later than last year, according to a Pioneer Press analysis based on last year’s enrollment.

A Murray sixth-grader played it perfectly, getting an 8:30 start after years of 9:30 starts in elementary school.

“It would have been nice to get out at 2 but I really don’t want to get up that early,” she said.

She was up Tuesday without an alarm.

Not every older student is reaping the benefits of the new schedule.

A seventh-grader set an alarm for her 7:45 bus to Open World Learning but didn’t need it. She shares a room with a younger sister who gets up early for a 7:30 start.

“When my parents woke her up,” she said, “I woke up, too.”