The Montgomery County school board voted Tuesday to start high schools and middle schools 20 minutes later next school year. Elementary schools will start 10 minutes later.
The board approved Superintendent Joshua Starr’s 20-minute recommendation by a vote of 5 to 3. High schools will start at 7:45 a.m. as opposed to 7:25 a.m. and middle schools will start at 8:15 a.m. Elementary schools, which operate on a two-tier schedule will start at 9 a.m. and 9:15 a.m.
The debate over whether to shift start times later has raged for the past year and has featured parents telling stories about sleep-deprived high school students as well as medical professionals detailing the health benefits when adolescents receive more sleep. The American Academy of Pediatrics issued a widely cited study last year recommending middle and high schools start no earlier than 8:30 a.m.
However, board members said proposed options for changing start times posed significant problems, particularly related to family issues including planning for child care before and after school as well as issues regarding traffic and safety concerns if high school students are driving to school during rush hour. Board members Patricia O’Neill, Rebecca Smondrowski, Phil Kauffman, Jill Ortman-Fouse and student member Dahlia Huh voted for the recommendation while Christopher Barclay, Judy Docca and Michael Durso voted against it.
“We have a lot of issues that we have to deal with in order to make this work for all our kids,” Docca said.
“I don’t feel like any of these are the right option,” said Smondrowski, who voted for the 20-minute change after explaining how much better she felt after lying in bed for an extra 20 minutes after her alarm went off.
Board member Phil Kauffman attempted to propose a motion that would have resulted in elementary schools starting before high schools and middle schools, but that wouldn’t be implemented until the 2016-2017 school year. He said the delay would help the school system budget for the estimated $4 million cost of implementing the plan as well as give families time to plan. The shift would have resulted in high schools starting at 8:50 a.m., middle schools at 9:30 a.m. and elementary schools at 7:45 a.m. and 8:15 a.m.
However, the motion was rejected, with only O’Neill, Kauffman and Ortman-Fouse supporting it. Mutiple members said they were worried the shift might impact older siblings in high school being able to care for younger siblings after school before parents arrived home from work.
O’Neill, who is board president, indicated the problems with all the proposals by saying, “There’s no perfect solution.”
The vote to move school start times back 20 minutes followed a controversial public comment in which one speaker associated the Monday suicide of a seventh-grader at Col. E. Brooke Lee Middle School in Silver Spring with sleep deprivation in an attempt to make a point for later school start times.
O’Neill, Rebecca Smondrowski and Barclay all expressed their displeasure with the comment.
“I’m dumbfounded by the insensitivity that a community member would use…to think that it’s appropriate to use the tragedy of any young person or family for what is ultimately political purposes,” Barclay said.
Many of the board members commented on the vitriolic nature of the debate surrounding the push to start schools later. Starr criticized the disparaging tone he said was used toward school staff who have studied the proposals.
“There are aspects of this conversation that are troubling,” he said. “One is the complete disregard by advocates of the competing demands.”
Last week, teachers overwhelmingly came out against shifting high school start times later in a survey administered by the Montgomery County Education Association, the local teachers’ union.
Prior to the vote, several advocates for later bell times made their case that starting high school later would not only help students physically and mentally, but also increase their academic performance.
Merry Eisner-Heidorn, policy chairman for the local chapter of Start School Later, a national nonprofit organization, said ensuring students get the right amount of sleep is much cheaper than other performance-related initiatives being implemented such as efforts to close the achievement gap or curriculum changes. “It may seem complicated, but actually this is really simple,” added Michael Rubinstein, a member of the advocacy group.
However, those points were dismissed by board members, who noted that a significant shift in start times could have major unforeseen effects on the community.
“This is the fiscally responsible thing to do,” Smondrowski said. “I don’t think it necessarily means it has to be forever.”
