Brian M. Stack's School Leadership Blog

This article was written originally for MultiBriefs Education . I recently spent time eavesdropping on some of my students while on a bus ride for a field trip. I couldn’t help but listen to their discussion on later start times at school. The day prior, our school had a two hour delay due to weather, the fifth this school year. The students were remarking at how much more productive and effective they felt overall when we had weather delays, and they wished school would start later on a regular basis. The conversation got me thinking about an issue that has come up for me time and time again as a high school principal. On two different occasions over the last five years, I have written about this topic. In a MultiBriefs Exclusive article in 2014 , I wrote about pros and cons of later start times for high schools. Then, I referenced a research report entitled "School Start Times For Adolescents," by the American Academy of Pediatrics that concluded that teens are

Inequities with technology access in our schools can cause students from different socioeconomic backgrounds to fail to develop information capital which leads to a shift in power. This concept has come to be known as a digital divide, and it is a problem that schools take a close look at. Today, school districts are seeking effective ways to increase access to digital tools and resources to disadvantaged populations in an effort to close the achievement gap that the digital divide has the potential to create. California Superintendent of Schools Darryl Adams of the Coachella Unified School District has a unique strategy to combat digital divide. Coachella is located in the desert just 50 miles north of the Mexican border where nearly 90% of students qualify for free and reduced lunch and few families have access to the Internet in their homes. More than half of the children are not fluent in English. About 2,000 students are the children of migrant farm workers where they labo