BY BRAD A. HODGES
SALISBURY POST

Deborah Garrigues had enough trouble getting to her first class on time last year.

When she returns to Salisbury High School as a junior on Aug. 7, the first bell will ring 15 minutes earlier.

“I barely get there as it is. You can barely stay awake,” said a surprised Garrigues at O.O. Rufty’s, where she works. “That’s going to be even more difficult.”

Teen-agers like Garrigues and many of their parents are unhappy that the first bell will ring earlier at all but one high school in Rowan County.

The changes affect younger children, too. All but three schools in the 30-campus system are shifting schedules to better utilize the system’s 198 school buses.

The stakes are high. Based on the current cost of buses, Rowan-Salisbury Schools can stand to save about $940,000 over the next seven years, transportation director Jim Christy estimates.

While principals arranged schedules in past years, the school system’s central staff set the times for the 2001-2002 year. With staggered opening and closing times, buses can serve more than one school.

Christy, who has been looking at changes since January, said the practice also helps bus drivers work more hours. Most bus drivers must seek a second source of income; two-thirds of them are also teaching assistants, he said.

“We’re having difficulty filling the positions we have,” Christy said. “This will help.”

But not everyone thinks earlier start times for high schools and later schedules for younger children are good moves.

Dr. Dennis Hill, a sleep specialist and neurologist at Rowan Regional Medical Center, has urged school board members to reconsider the changes. He says teen-agers already don’t get enough sleep.

“Adolescents need more sleep than anyone else,” he said. “...On the basis of their biological clock, they tend to want to go to bed late and sleep late. And during the school week, it’s very hard for them to fall asleep by 10:30.”

Citing the National Sleep Foundation, Hill said teens tend to need eight-and-a-half to nine-and-a-half hours of sleep a night.

“They are chronically sleep-deprived. They are irritable and there are behavioral problems,” he said. “...The people who are making these early schedules are flying in the face of the biological clock of these teen-agers.”

Many other school systems in North Carolina are staggering school schedules to save money on bus transportation, Christy said.

The state gives school systems money for transportation based on a formula that rates how efficiently school systems operate. It measures each district’s number of routes, buses and students served.

Rowan-Salisbury Schools received $2.8 million from the state this year for bus transportation. Local tax dollars brought in $334,873 more.

Principal H.K. Gaster said that an earlier schedule at North Rowan High School wasn’t an issue there several years ago, when her school’s first bell began ringing at 7:15 — the earliest time among Rowan County high schools.

Some students once arrived by 6:30, though the school now doesn’t open until 6:45.

“It has been a real advantage as far as after-school activities. I think they’ll find they don’t see much difference, really,” she said of next year’s changes.

That doesn’t satisfy Alex Beaver, another rising junior at Salisbury High who says the changes just don’t make sense.

“It’s going to be hard, especially first period,” he said. “I’m going to have to get night vision goggles.”

Contact Brad A. Hodges at 704-797-4266 or bhodges@salisburypost.com .