Smithfield — The school board voted Tuesday to shift school start times at Clayton, Smithfield-Selma and West Johnston high schools and the elementary and middle schools in those high-school districts.

In all, 22 schools will start and end at different times when school resumes in August.

The move was made to allow buses to run additional routes in the mornings. School leaders said the change would allow them to accommodate more bus riders without having to buy buses. The change would also decrease the time kids spend on the bus because the buses would cover less territory on each run.

“We tried to do the best we could… with the least amount of impact,” schools Superintendent Anthony Parker said. “We believe we can refine it further, we know we can do what we have on paper.”

The board discussed going to a multi-route system at its retreat in February, and at the March board meeting. They presented a plan and adopted it on Tuesday, and board members Larry Strickland and Donna White said they thought it was unfair to adopt the plan before parents had a chance to look at it and give their opinions.

Both said they thought after the March discussion that the board would schedule a public hearing before making any decision, and voted against the plan on that basis. Board member Jack O’Hale was absent.

Board Chairman Kay Carroll said he thought a public hearing was unnecessary because the plan took care of parents’ concerns from the first time the board talked about changing school hours to add bus routes.

“I believe we’re fulfilling, without a public hearing, the information we’ve been given by parents,” Carroll said. “This is one subject where we had plenty of input last year. We’re not discounting it, we’re including it this year.”

White said she heard those comments from parents, but they also told her that if the board were to consider changing school hours again, they wanted to have some say.

“It’s not about being against the proposal, it’s about letting the public have a buy-in,” White said.

Carroll said Johnston County has lost ground in its efforts to get and keep good teachers, as neighboring counties have raised their supplement and bonus pay and Johnston has not. At the same time, county commissioners are asking the school board to hold the line on spending. Carroll said the plan showed a good faith effort to find more money for teachers without increasing spending.

The board had approved a similar concept that affected only Clayton-area schools last August, but reversed the decision two days later when county commissioners told the school system to buy the 22 buses needed out of the utilities budget.

Parents had said that the decision, which came less than two weeks before school was to start, didn’t allow them enough time to adjust childcare schedules. Parents and owners of businesses such as dance schools and swim classes said the change to school hours hurt after-school activities.

Butler Hall was against the plan at that time because he agreed with parents that it was done too close to the start of school, but supported the move this year.

“It won’t matter what time school starts if we don’t have the quality of teachers they need,” Hall said.