The superintendent of Fairfax Public County Schools will propose a new plan that could make a big impact on your children's lives at school.
Superintendent Karen Garza presented new start times for high school and middle school students at a meeting Monday. Under her plan, high schools in the county will start nearly an hour later, at 8 or 8:10 a.m., while middle school students would move to 7:30 a.m., 15 minutes earlier than they currently begin.
Start times for elementary school students in the district would remain the same.
"I maybe, maybe, will get six hours," said Oakton High School senior Ryan Edwards. "It is just impossible for me to get the amount of sleep I need."
It's a family effort. "I get up at 5:20 and start waking him at 5:40 so that he has enough time to really wake up," his mom, Terry Edwards, told Northern Virginia reporter David Culver.
"The start times are just way too early," she said.
The school board has looked at this issue before, but the debate was not well received. The cost of adding bus drivers and rerouting buses was one of the biggest financial obstacles to later start times. But this time around, there are more studies backing up the need for sleep among teenagers.
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Sleep doctors from Children's National Medical Center have been working with the school system for the past year to determine whether students need more sleep and whether schools' start times should be changed.
The group found that, on average, children are getting six hours of sleep a night; researchers say most need at least nine. Many high school students are up by 5:45 a.m. in order to start school at 7:20 a.m., with 55 percent of students getting less than six hours of sleep a night.
"That early school start time works against the biology of the adolescent body and brain," said sleep expert Daniel Lewin.
The school board will make a final decision Oct. 23. If the proposal passes, any changes would not take effect until next school year.
Officials in Maryland are also working to push back start times for students. Last week, Gov. Martin O'Malley asked for a study to find out the best times for school to start across the state.
