Students are looking at 18 more hours of sleep next school year as Old Rochester Regional High School implements a new program to give teachers extra planning time.

At Thursday night’s ORR School Committee meeting, Principal Mike Devoll presented the more complete plan after several questions were raised at a previous meeting.

Stressing that the program is a pilot, Devoll said the common planning time will be two Thursdays a month from 7:20 a.m. to 8:20 a.m, pushing classes back to 8:30 a.m. on those mornings.

“I don’t want this to be looked at as free time. We will be working and working hard,” said Devoll.

As the school implements a new core curriculum, Devoll said there will be many kinks to work out.

“We’ve just adopted a new English curriculum. There’s an overlap in health and biology – we don’t want to overlap topics. Social studies and English and math and science – we need time to align those curriculums,” he said.

The planning time will allow teachers time to work together for project development, interdisciplinary work, and to create best practices, explained Devoll.

At a previous school committee meeting, members were concerned that students would have less class time and asked if teachers could meet at earlier.

“It’s difficult for teachers to arrive at 7 a.m.,” said Devoll, who noted that their contractual day begins at 7:20 a.m.

He also said that the mandatory 990 hours of “structured learning time” required by the state would still be met. The school also has an eight-day class rotation, which means time will not be cut from the same classes each planning day.

As for what students will do during those extra hours, Devoll anticipates that most will arrange to come to school later on those days.

“When given the opportunity to sleep in, they will sleep in,” said Devoll. Currently, approximately one-third of kids ride the bus to school, and those buses will continue to run on the same schedule during planning mornings.

Devoll suggested that students will have extra time to hold club meetings, which might usually interfere with sports schedules and other afterschool activities. He expects 100 to 200 students to be at the school during the planning times. Teaching assistants, the librarian, campus aide as well as Devoll himself and Assistant Principal Mike Parker will supervise students.

If the planning time doesn’t work out, Devoll said, “It could be as simple as a one-semester pilot. We know that this needs to be successful. We know there’s a lot riding on it.”