I think this is a matter of mom's not wanting to get up early , schools have been functioning for decades on an early schedule . Please leave well enough alone.

Bravo, Sandy and like-minded colleagues on the Board. Learning from the experiences of other school districts around the country that have addressed this issue is the way to go. Let's continue to gather data in good faith and examine it in order to determine logical next steps. Thank you for your leadership.

Yeah, I'm sure all these women rigged the studies so they can get their beauty sleep.

More than fifty percent of moms work, so chances are they are up anyway. And by the way, it's "moms," not mom's -- apparently you could have benefited from later high-school start times.

This is an excellent idea, several specific studies have shown a direct correlation between grades (high school student's ability to focus) and sleep. Teens also show a remarkable improvement in behavior across the board. There's a significant difference even with just one extra hour. They are not adults, their brains are going through a lot (parents of teens should know!), and they can't 'catch up' on sleep on the weekends like we do. This is a wonderful, and I hope the board votes yes. We should be doing everything we can to help our children and change our ways of doing things as evidence about their needs evolves, instead of sticking with things just because it's convenient or tradition for us.

It is unhealthy for our HIGH SCHOOL students to rise as early as they do to get their education. One need only see these young adults seep-walking at the bus stop at O'early a.m......Can we really ignore the studies that support that teenagers need more sleep?
Early start times have been in place for years....this does not make it right. For the benefit of our FUTURE, I sincerely hope this motion finally will pass.

Wow ... Consider this post an open note to the school board. Please vote NO on this issue.

Not sure what an extra 40 minutes of sleep will do for some, but it will put our children on the road for some of the busiest rush hour traffic of the day during both the morning and afternoon. The previous studies during 2008 also indicated SIGNIICANT cost associated with shifting the bus schedules to accomodate a later high school start, which WE .. . the taxpayers will have to absorb. Let's also not forget the 1000's of kids involved in after school activities that will also be impacted.

School Board, please vote NO on this change for the same reasons that it made to vote NO during the past 2 times this came up. I cannot believe this is being revisited yet a third time and am SHOCKED that's it's been kept so quiet this go around.

This is a great idea, and I hope that it passes, even though it is personally inconvenient. I am already up early, and the early school time allows me to drop my daughter off at her high school on my normal way to work. However, it is clear from the studies and from speaking with experts in adolescent brain development that high school is exactly the time when children need the most, rather than the least, sleep, and that even an hour can make a significant difference. I know from speaking with people in Arlington and my wife's many relatives in the Twin Cities area that it has worked well in other areas, and I have no doubt that it will be a boon in Fairfax county as well.

Will they get more sleep by shifting the schedule an hour or will it just shift the time at which they sleep?

There are kids who stay up late studying and then arise early to continue studying. It only makes sense to give these dedicated and motivated students additional time for sleep! I say let's go for an 8:00 a.m. start time. It makes sense!

I'm all for a later start time, but in order for this to be a success, FCPS needs to address the original issues that torpedoed this the last time. A lot of scare stories were put out about cancelling sports due to places being unable to accommodate later practices, young children being unable to get picked up by older ones, younger children walking to school in the dark, etc. If you can address these issues beforehand, I believe you will have more success in persuading parents to go along with this. I think it's a great idea to see how other big jurisdictions have accommodated later start times. Bravo to the school board for revisiting this issue.

I too would like to see later hours for teens especially, but it is a two sided coin. Please hear me out. I do understand the research done on teens needing more sleep as I have raised five kids who are way beyond school. I remember those days of getting them up early and although some of them were slugs moving through the house, other's bounced awake. We had a strict rule about getting to bed by 10:00 p.m. during the week, giving them at least 8 hrs. sleep. This also meant their evening was spent doing homework after dinner and when it was completed, THEN they could watch T.V. or spend time with friends etc. But, bedtime was as I stated, 10:00. In our modern world, a lot of teens aren't even home at 10: P.M. They're hanging out at tha mall, McDonalds, or playing video games until sun-up. Now before you jump on me, please understand, I'm not slamming your kids. All I'm saying is so much of the comments are about teens needing more sleep, so we should change the rules a bit and give our kids a curfew during the week, and that is a family curfew, not a legal one. It is our responsibility as parents to see that our children are at home and sleeping when they should be, in order to have fresh minds for school.

(Cont.) My reason for seeing a need for later hours is to lessen the traffic in the morning for people driving to work. Have you ever been held up in the morning, sometimes several times by a schoolbus? Then you know what I mean and now there are sooo many of them on every route. I have actually known people who were fired from a job for being late for work due to gross amounts of traffic and school busses, no matter what time they left in the morning for work. The delimma to me is, we have grown into a huge society with thousand's of vehicles on the road at the same time by school and work combined. It isn't just the kids who are to be considered, it is also responsible people trying to get to work on time

Frankly, I can’t believe the School Board is going to expend more resources, in this economy, to revisit this issue for a Fifth time. Fairfax public schools studied this issue in 1991, 1998 and 2006. Each time a study recommended no schedule change.

In 2009, Fairfax County residents responded definitively to an FCPS proposal to change school start times –over three-fourths of residents are satisfied with the current schedule and do not want to change school start and end times. The results of an online survey conducted in February 2009, and the results of seven community dialogue meetings also held in February 2009 concluded:

• 80% of students; 75% of parents; 85% of staff and 80% of community were satisfied with the current schedule (were either indifferent or believed it worked well for them)

• About 37,000 of the 50,000 parents who responded to the online survey were satisfied with the current schedule; that was three times more than those who reported dissatisfaction with the schedule, and four times more than signed a petition by the group SLEEP, which supported later start times for teens

• 77% of people at the community dialogue meetings did not want the schedule to change

Here is a link to the research, from all points of view, that has already been compiled by FCPS on this issue: http://www.fcps.edu/fts/taskforce07/documents/index.shtml. Do we really need to waste valuable resources on more studies of the same issue?

Kids allowed an additional hour of sleep are more likely to ride the bus. Later start times will probably relieve the pressure on the kiss-n-ride traffic at schools.

Compare the schedules of a typical Loudoun County high school student, Maria, with a typical Fairfax County high school student, Sean. Maria's alarm clock rings at 7:30 AM; Sean is 10 minutes into his 1st period Calculus class. Maria starts cross country practice at 4:00 PM; Sean waits an hour after the end of school (2:05 PM) to start cross country practice at 3:00 PM. Both kids are home sharing dinner with their family at 6:30 PM. The difference? Maria gets 8.5 hours of sleep while Sean gets 6.5 hours of sleep. (See http://www.fairfaxeducationcoalition.org/sites/default/files/StudentScheduleComparisonLoudoun-FairfaxCounties.pdf and http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/matters/benefits-of-sleep/learning-memory)

ANSWER: 8:00 AM

QUESTION: What is the average 1st bell time for the 2011 Parade Magazine All-America Football Team? (See http://www.fairfaxeducationcoalition.org/sites/default/files/AllAmericaTeamHighSchoolStartTimes.pdf and http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090608071939.htm)

Imagine, if you care, how much better our FCPS students' quality of life and academic performance will be with an additional 2 hours of sleep.

Olive
I would like to know how this change will impact the elementary school schedules? My daughter didn't start elemetary school until 9:10 which was ridiculous. Not only did I have to drive her to school and pay for before school care (of which I was very grateful for the SACC Program). It was a HUGE transition to middle/ high school hours; let alone your kids at risk walking to and standing in the pitch dark on a corner of a busy road waiting for the bus to pick them up.

Also, this has nothing to do with mom's wanting their beauty sleep either. I bet the moron that made the "beauty sleep" comment relied on his wife to ensure his children got off to school on time. I hope this is passed. Quite frankly, it should be 9:00AM. That's when I attended high school and played as well. I certainly don't ever remember being as tired as my daughter was during those years. As a single parent, you can't imagine the horror of not be able to contact your child after school school to ensure they're taking a 'coma' nap due to exhaustion. This is about your children; and the reasearch to back it up.

In my day, we were forced to stay awake in shifts all night, fending off the wild animals that would hungrily circle the village while we completed our chores before sunrise, and then (and only then) were we afforded the opportunity to plead with the elders to be allowed to make the 12-mile barefoot trek through the snow and mud to the schoolhouse...those of us who were fortunate enough to be allowed to attend school gratefully worked off our indebtedness for the privilege by laboring in the mines during the off-season

On balance, it's a good idea... but there are SO many effects that haven't been quantified.
Before proceeding, the school board should identify specific areas for mitigation: teens who work to support their families, rush-hour traffic, parking provision, sports and extra-curriculuar acitivities, and the impact on elementary/middle school students. It is quite possible that all of these could be addressed in a satisfactory way - but they haven't proven it. Just because an urban district like Arlington, or a smaller and less traffic-diseased one like Loudoun, can pull it off, doesn't automatically mean Fairfax can. Our distances and traffic patterns are far greater - look at how far Dranesville kids have to go to get to Langley, for example.

We can't control whether parents impose a reasonable curfew on their children, or the teens simply take advantage and stay out even later. But we CAN control whether we've done our due diligence on the other consequences. Given a real plan with real answers, I agree with John- it's worth the money. Given platitudes and "just-trust-us-we'll-figure-it-out," I would have to say no - not enough information yet.

There are both positive and negative aspects to starting school later in Fairfax County and they need to all be carefully evaluated. One thing to consider is that Fairfax County has been pumping out well-educated children who go on to great success for a long time. I have always been a great morning person and went to bed fairly early in high school. I can still remember the change in my body during those specific years that made me feel that I wasn't functioning in the early morning and left me exhausted in the afternoons. I was taking those "coma" naps somebody talked about and I have never been a nap person. However, on the other hand, I made very good grades and played sports, so a motivated and supervised teenager can still do what it takes to be successful, even with this challange. One big difference from then to now is all of the distractions that are available to kids these days that we didn't have (cell phones, video games, computers), which is where added usage rules and supervision might need to be explored by the families that are having issues. Maybe there is a way to make adjustments for at least the kids who are getting picked up the earliest to give them some more time, instead of trying to fix something system-wide that a majority of parents in the area think is working fine. Additionally, a study now shouldn't be as expensive or time-consuming, as there should be plenty of readily-available information on school systems that have implemented this.

Ok, let's talk about costs.  What about the cost of wasted instruction for students who aren't fully awake?  What about the cost for remediation of students who failed to learn core curriculum material due to sleepiness?  And what about the cost  to schools -- in lost instruction time for both teachers and students -- of teens who have disciplinary problems aggravated by a lack of sleep?

It's the duty of the school board to ensure the most efficient use of our taxpayer dollars and early start times waste precious instructional resources.  In these days of tight budgets we can't afford not to maximize student face time with teachers.  With the clear science of sleep medicine demonstrating that students do not learn effectively with early start times, it's time for FCPS to institute latter start times.

I agree with later start times for teens. They need more sleep!!

Ahh yes! All those experts who say that teens need more sleep - what do they know? Much better to pack the kids off to school so folks can get to work without having to resort to SACC - not at all self-serving!

Those extra-curricular activities that folks think so important. Guess what? They are "extra"! NoVA is an over-achieving, "our kids have to do everything and do it well" environment. Getting up at 5 AM to catch the bus? I never had to be at school before 8:30 AM. 3-4 hours of homework per night? I never had more than about 1 1/2 hours. But I did get to chat with my parents over breakfast each day, and we ate dinner and watched TV together in the evenings.

I always thought the reasons earlier times were two fold. One was for the Buses to miss the teeth of rush hours and for after school spring and fall outdoor sport matches against other schools. Was I wrong?

At Mary - one kid's experience is not exactly a study. Talk to others. Kids aren't acting out at 7:20 in the morning, they are either asleep or walking in late!
At LS - again, should should we send our kids to bed at 8:30? Really? Use common sense. Mine are in bed between 9:30 an 10 and they still struggle to get up for their first class at 7:20.
At Terry - not quite sure how swapping elementary start times and high school start times really changes the impact on rush hour, but may be I'm missing something.

Here are two studies that may be of interest:

"A’s from Zzzz’s? The Causal Effect of School Start Time on the Academic Achievement of Adolescents" (http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/scarrell/sleep.pdf) examines the effects of class start time on 1st year U.S. Air Force Academy students most of whom are 18 years old. The advantage of this study is that it was highly controlled and randomized.

A study by the Hamilton Project/Brookings Institution, "Organizing Schools to Improve Student Achievement: Start Times, Grade Configurations, and Teacher Assignments" (http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/papers/2011/09_organize_jacob_rockoff/092011_organize_jacob_rockoff_paper.pdf) demonstrates, among other things, that healthier start times have a positive effect on academic achievement that can be translated into a dollar value for students' future earnings. It works out to be an additional $17,500 (present value) in lifetime earnings for students who start school one hour later.

While $17,500 doesn't sound like a lot, it does put a dollar value to later start times. As noted by others, the real value is improved quality of life and academic achievement for just about all of our public school students.

If any of your progeny have trouble falling asleep when they go to bed, just have them read these comments.

For those who have commented that most teens are up late because they are at the malls, texting, or online, I would like to say that the majority of kids I know are good kids who would love to get to bed early, but who end up staying up late to study or finish homework. The kids who are taking all honors or AP classes typically spend 3-4 hours (minimum!) on homework a night. That's not because they're procrastinating, that's just sheer volume. If your child participates in sports, then he/she has pretty much no chance of getting to bed early. It's easy to tell people to cut sports and other activities (drama, music, art, etc.) out in order to get their kids to bed earlier, but do we really want our kids to go to school, come home, study, and go to straight to bed? What kind of a life is that? Ideally, FCPS can come up with a schedule that will allow our kids to start school at a reasonable time (thus giving them a better chance to learn), and also allow them time to participate in outside activities so they can become well rounded individuals - without sacrificing valuable sleep.

To my earlier points, many across Fairfax county are not even aware this issue is alive and brewing again. I've talked to a number of people since this article first appeared and not one ..., knew later high school start times were being actively pushed again. Some that had not heard advised that they had been actively involved in pushing back on this initiative during the last cycle (circa 2007-2009). Additionally, all acted surprised to hear that this issue was a platform that vaulted several of the new Board members into office. Shame on me and others for not being a bit more aware regarding our local politics.

All the above aside, I would urge those that are actively pushing this issue to carefully examine the applicable studies and public surveys from years past. School Board, please do not spend our money pursuing what history demonstrates the majority of taxpayers in Fairfax county do not want.

Even if the Board does endorse and conduct another study, I'll be interested to hear about where the estimated incremental ~$42M a year will come from (2008 dollars). If memory serves, Mr. Dale and others worked very hard during the last county Budget cycle to balance the Fairfax public school budget (while even considering CUTTING some bus service a year or two ago).

From a general school board fiduciary perspective, not sure that allowing this genie out of the bottle, yet another time ...., is the right thing to do for Fairfax County.

It would be even sadder to see elementary school kids out at 6:15--and dangerous.
If elementary schools started at 7 or so, they would be going to school in the dark.

There are lots of reasons to change the schedule--and just as many-or more-to leave it as it is. Many high school kids from our lower income families are at home to take care of their siblings as they come home from school.Many babysit for neighbors, too. Right or wrong, this is a fact. If the elementary schools got out at 2, the high school siblings might not be there to care for them and they could be in empty houses.
Unless FCPS can work out schedules that are closer in time for start and dismissal, it makes more sense to leave it as it is. Too many kids have after school jobs and responsibilities that would be affected. The sports kids may have a more active voice, but the true hardship would be on the poor.

The online poll by FCPS staff (2009) didn't control for multiple responses. Staff report, “Though respondents were expected to respond to the survey just once, there were no electronic limitations put in place to limit access to the survey.” FCPS failed to prevent or eliminate multiple responses from the same individual and failed to even provide instructions to complete the survey only once. Only 29% of responses came from a unique IP address.

Further, the staff report states, "Rather than selecting a representative sample so that results could be generalized, the survey was intended to be available to the full community." FCPS report authors recognize the results can't speak for Fairfax County, and yet, the survey results have been used to do just that.

I have since seen FCPS conduct random sampling surveys with proper controls.

Earlier surveys show a strong majority support later high school start times:
FCCPTA (2008): 85% of respondents preferred later high school start times.
FEA (2008): 79% said HS starts too early.
JEB Stuart HS (2005, with help from Dr. Riddile, principal): 70% of students said school starts too early; more than 80% of parents said sometime at or after 8:30 a.m. would be best for their student; nearly 70% of teachers said 7:20 is too early.

FCPS 1998 Task Force Report: Parents 87% prefer later start times (20% prefer 30 minute shift and 67% prefer 60 minute shift). 71% of students would prefer later.

Low-income students and work -- The 1998 Task Force reported that employers surveyed said they would hire students regardless of dismissal time.

The 2005 survey of JEB Stuart students (a Fairfax school with a relatively high population of FRM students) included questions about after-school jobs -- granted, this may have changed given the current economic climate and should be repeated, but for what it is worth, in 2005:

22.7% of student respondents were currently working while going to school.
For those who worked, the average number of days/week that they worked was 4 (range = 1-7)
For those who worked, the average number of hours/week that they worked was 20 (range = 1-45) (This is the tipping point for sleep loss -- research shows that students who work more than 20 hours per week sleep less than other students).
For those who worked, the average number of hours/day worked on school days was 4.7 (range = 1-10)
For those who worked, the average number of hours/day worked on weekend days was 6.9 (range = 1-13)
For those who worked, the average start time for their job on school days was 4:22pm (range = 2:00 – 9:00pm)
The survey left room for open-ended comments. I will never forget the student who wrote, I work from 9 to midnight cleaning office buildings with my father and pray for later start times every day. Student jobs don't necessarily begin at 2:05 p.m. and FCPS does have a waiver policy that allows students to dismiss early for work.

From the perspective of our children's physical and mental health, there is clearly no doubt that later high school starts are quite beneficial, and that our current system, where start times get progressively earlier as one goes from elementary school to middle school to high school is exactly backwards of what optimum childhood development requires. Any adolescent brain researcher will tell you that in a heartbeat. To me, that is more important than most everything else. It seems quite foolish to invest what we do in excelent schools, only to see them not used to their potential because starting times are all wrong. And I cannot believe that there are any insuperable barriers to later start times, as they exist in Arlington and Loudon counties, as well as around the country. I find it hard to imagine that something everyone else can do is so infeasible for us.

I really wish there was a way to like or send stars or something to comments we like!
@ Phyllis - THANK YOU for the information!
@Eric - I couldn't have said it better myself!

Due to changes in circadian rhythms at the onset of puberty, adolescents are not able to fall asleep until 11:00pm or later. Science tells us that no matter how early you force your teen to go to bed, he or she can't actually fall asleep until 11 or 12. According to SCIENTIFIC evidence, the majority of Fairfax teens are getting 5.5-6.5 hours of sleep each night. Earlier bed times cannot physiologically change this. Only later start times can.

55% of all fatal fall-asleep traffic accidents are caused by people age 25 and younger. Forget grades and sports and let's focus on lives.

I am an educator who retired after 32 years as teacher, literacy coach, curriculum director, and school improvement specialist, I regret to see that the district my grandchildren attend is ignoring current research. We are about educating children, our country's future. They should be the only thing that matters in this discussion and decision-making process

Can anyone please tell me how much money we will be spending on this study? I have 2 high school students and whether they start later or earlier will not impact them. This is the schedule they are given and they will do what is necessary to adapt. How can anyone support spending more money on this issue. They have the research and the knowledge if it is feasible-they need to make their decision one way or another. Both sides of this debate must demand that we not spend another cent on another study.