Public Schools Starting EARLIER School Days Next Year in New York State

School districts will be waking up almost an hour earlier for the 2025-2026 school in New York State. The move has a lot of parents concerned for their kid's sleep schedule and the family routine.

Some public schools are moving the daily start time up 1 hour.

Depending on what district your kid is in throughout New York State, their start time for the school day next year might be happening even earlier. For example in central New York State, some districts start time for elementary schools are moving from 8:50 AM to 7:50 AM for the 2025-2026 school year.

Why is it happening? A lot of New York State school districts have to change their start times to either their elementary schools or high schools because there is such a major problem with getting bus drivers across the State. Districts sometimes are not able to pick up all the kids for one school until they are done with another one because there are simply just not enough drivers. Therefore, staggering the school day start times next year would help solve this problem.

There are some districts in New York State who, at some point, have actually offered incentives and asked parents to drive their kids to schools because there is such a shortage of transportation in certain districts. Not too long ago, there were school districts who were offering parents money to drive their kids to work. The Buffalo School District in Western New York did a survey to determine if parents would be interested in driving their kids to school for money. They were going to possibly pay parents 58.5 cents per mile.