Last Wednesday, members of the Boston School Committee voted to approve the school department’s ambitious plans to change start times with an eye toward later starts for the city’s high schools.
When the list of new start times for next year was published on the Boston Public Schools website Thursday evening, with many elementary schools showing start times as early as 7:15 and release times as early as 1:15 p.m., the plan ignited a firestorm of parent anger that only grew in intensity over the weekend.
Sunday, parents gave voice to that outrage, filling a function room at Doyle’s Café in Jamaica Plain for a meeting on the start time changes and collecting more than 5,200 signatures in an online petition to roll back the changes.
“In seven years in office, I’ve never had as much communication from constituents as I’ve had in the last two days,” said City Councilor Matt O’Malley, who estimates he’s received more than 100 phone calls.