Have you ever stayed up until 12:00 am to finish homework and projects and stressed over how little sleep you will get since you need to wake up at 5:30 a.m. to get ready for school?

If you answered “yes,” then you understand why leaders in Montgomery County have chosen to try and change the start time for high schools in the county.  In Montgomery County, high schools start at 7:25 a.m.   In the near future, if Superintendent of Schools Dr. Joshua Starr has his way, you will get more sleep.

Dr. Starr, working with a group called the Bell Times Work Group, recently proposed a new schedule for start and end times for schools – at all levels – in the county.  Under the new schedule, high school start times will be 50 minutes later, moving from 7:25 a.m. to 8:15 a.m.  This means that high schools will end at 3 p.m. instead of 2:10p.m.  Middle school start times will begin 10 minutes earlier, from 7:55 a.m. to 7:45 a.m. and will end at 2:30 p.m.  However, at the elementary school level, start times will remain the same (8:50 a.m. and 9:15 a.m.), but the new plan calls for an extension of the instructional day by 30 minutes, which will have schools ending at 3:35 p.m. and 4 p.m. All of these changes result in an equal amount of time in school for all students of 6 hours and 45 minutes.

The concept of changing school start times is nothing new.  A 1997 study conducted by The Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement (CAREI) at the University of Minnesota on suburban schools in the Minneapolis area focused on how changing high school start times from 7:15 a.m. to 8:40 a.m. would impact students, staff, and the community.  In the study’s findings teachers and principals reported that students were more alert in class, there was a calmer atmosphere in the hallways, and fewer disciplinary referrals to the principal took place. Counselors reported that fewer students sought help for stress relief due to academic pressures and fewer students came to them with peer relationship problems and difficulty with parents.

Work in the Dr. Starr’s group cited similar findings.  According to “Delaying School Start Times and the Health of Adolescents” by Dr. Judith A. Owens, Director of Sleep Medicine

Children’s National Medical Center:

• Seventy percent of students require an adult to wake them for school.
• Twenty-eight percent of students fall asleep in school at least one time a week.
• Twenty-two percent of student fall asleep completing homework

While this report seems to show that the obvious answer to changing high school start times is positive, others find fault with making a change.

One group that opposes a change in start – and end – times is students who have other commitments after school.    These students  worry that their sport practices and other after school activities will start later and result in them arriving home later.  A later arrival at home will leave less time to complete homework, spend time with family, or work in order to go to bed at a reasonable time.

“I’m good with the way it is [currently] because I want to get out of school at an early time to hang with friends,” explains PB ninth grader Adam West.

Denise Lee, a Silver Spring resident who graduated from Blake High School, feels the opposite of West.  “ [Schools should start later] because the day will end later and students will have less free time between the end of the school day and their parents returning home from work. This change in the school schedule may result in students getting into less trouble.”

If you are a student or parent in Montgomery County, this topic will become extremely important over the next few months as Dr. Starr and the school board prepare to make a final decision on the issue.