Local parent Sandra Landis knows how difficult it is for teens to get enough sleep before having to wake up for classes that start at 7:45 a.m. in Montgomery County public high schools.
“These kids are not lying, they are not tired till around 11 p.m.,” Landis, whose son graduated from Bethesda’s Walter Johnson High School in 2022, told Bethesda Today on Wednesday.
The leader of the Montgomery County chapter of the advocacy group Start School Later, Landis also is chair of a start time subcommittee for the Montgomery County Council of PTAs (MCCPTA). This spring, the MCCPTA is reviving what has become a perennial issue for Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) – a push to start classes later to benefit older students’ health.
MCCPTA is advocating for MCPS to push back middle and high school start times to be no earlier than 8:30 a.m. The Healthy Sleep for Adolescents resolution, approved Feb. 25 by MCCPTA, cites research that has shown that not enough sleep puts teens at risk for car accidents and risky behaviors.
It’s an issue that state lawmakers are also considering. Legislation was introduced during this year’s Maryland General Assembly session that would require public schools statewide to begin no earlier than 8 a.m. for middle school and 8:30 a.m. for high school.
The Montgomery County school board opposes the bill, according to a Feb. 20 school board meeting, citing concerns over maintaining local autonomy.
In a Thursday statement to Bethesda Today, MCPS spokesperson Liliana Lopez said MCPS valued MCCPTA engagement, but wasn’t currently considering changing school start times “due to complexities of transportation schedules, extracurricular activities and the scale of the system.”
School board president Julie Yang also said this week that the board hasn’t discussed changing start times. The research surrounding sleep and student performance was “spot on,” Yang said, but noted the issue was complex.
She said that as part of an ongoing review of school boundaries and evaluation of MCPS programs, the district could discuss “efforts to maximize school schedules for student well-being.”
According to the resolution, MCCPTA will host a community town hall to discuss sleep issues and whether schools should start later and also advocate for MCPS to “create policies that give teens the chance to get sleep.” The MCCPTA will also ask MCPS to study and share information about the transportation needs, costs and solutions for starting the day at middle and high schools at 8:30 a.m. or later and keeping elementary school start times at 8 a.m. or later.
An old conversation pops back up
Changing school start times to provide older students with more time to sleep is a perennial issue that re-emerges every few years among county public school parents. One push for later class start times began in 2012, when more than 3,700 people signed a petition to change bell times to 8:15 a.m. or later. At the time, the high schools in MCPS began at 7:25 a.m., middle schools started at 7:55 a.m. and elementary schools, which operate on a two-tier schedule, began at 8:50 or 9:15 a.m. MCPS didn’t act on the issue at that time.
In 2015, after advocacy from the community, the county school board voted to push back start times by 20 minutes. Currently, high schools start at 7:45 a.m. and middle schools start at 8:15 a.m. Elementary schools now start 9 a.m. or 9:25 a.m. depending on the school.
The 20-minute change was deemed the most practical and, more importantly, cost-free solution at the time, according to MCPS. District staff initially proposed shifting high school start times back 50 minutes and starting middle schools earlier. But that plan would’ve shortened the window for the district’s bus fleet to deliver students to the different levels of schools and would have increased the elementary school day by 30 minutes, which would have cost $21 million.
The school start times conversation was rehashed again in 2017, with some principals objecting to the changes instituted in 2015 due to the shifts causing a slightly lengthened elementary school day. But start times have remained the same since 2015.
In addition to possibly prohibitive costs, local arguments over the years against further changing start times have included the possible impacts on school sports schedules and teens’ ability to hold after-school jobs.
Other local school districts have also changed their start times. In 2014, Fairfax County Public Schools delayed high school start times until 8 a.m. beginning in the 2015-2016 school year, with middle schools beginning at 7:30 a.m., according to the district’s website. Now, the district is considering pushing back middle school start times.
And the issue has become part of a national conversation in recent years as other states take steps to change school start times. California was the first state in the country to pass a law in 2019 that required middle schools to start no earlier than 8 a.m. and for high schools to start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. Florida lawmakers passed a similar bill in 2023, although legislators have proposed a bill this year to repeal that law.
The science
According to the National Sleep Foundation, teenagers typically need between eight to 10 hours, and as much as 11 hours, of sleep. However, less than 20% of teens report getting the recommended amount of sleep on school days and weekends.
The circadian rhythms of humans, the cycle that regulates sleep and wakefulness, shifts in teenage years, making it so teenagers stay up later without getting tired and often aren’t alert until later in the morning, the foundation says.
MCCPTA President Brigid Howe noted in a Feb. 28 statement about the MCCPTA resolution that the foundation joins the U.S. surgeon general, American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in recommending that middle and high school start times should be no earlier than 8:30 a.m.
According to a published review of 38 studies exploring the association between school start times and adolescent outcomes, later start times correspond with improved attendance, reduced tardiness, less falling asleep in class, better grades and fewer car crashes.
Howe also noted that research showed improved sleep has been shown to reduce aggression and gun violence, a topic that’s been top of mind among MCPS families due to recent safety incidents.
In January, Silver Spring’s John F. Kennedy High School experienced a back-to-back lockdown and shelter in place due to the report of a gun on campus and a medical emergency on the same day.
Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in downtown Bethesda recently experienced two lockdowns. The first occurred Feb. 19 due to an off-campus fight involving B-CC students during which a gun was fired. No injuries were reported. Two B-CC students were charged in connection with the fight.
The second lockdown occurred Feb. 25 after a student reported that another student showed them a gun in the bathroom. After a lockdown and search for the student in the community, the student was arrested and found to be in possession of a pellet gun that resembled a handgun.
MCCPTA has included advocating for later start times as one of its priorities for the past four years but has yet to see action from the school board or MCPS, Howe’s statement said.
“I really feel like this has to be collaborative between the school system, the board, and the parents and the community and the science,” Landis said. “This is something that is a win- win for everybody, and because the science behind it is so overwhelming.”
