This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Washington • Hundreds of Fairfax County, Va., high school seniors have dropped their first classes of the day so they can stay in bed a bit longer this school year, part of a decades-long effort pushing for later school start times.
About 650 students - 5 percent of the Class of 2014 - are participating this fall, with numbers steadily growing. Nearly 19 percent of the seniors at Robert E. Lee High School in Springfield, for example, are coming to school late after they dropped early morning courses.
To start school late, students must be on track to graduate and get permission from their principal and parents to take part. They can drop as many as two first-period classes so long as the seniors do not need the credits to graduate. And they need to find their own way to school without relying on buses.
Some school administrators, parents and students question whether the new program is fair to the 11,000 other teens who must still stumble to bus stops in the pre-dawn darkness. These include poor students who do not own a car or can't rely on parents who have day jobs.
The first classes of the day begin at 7:20 a.m. in Fairfax, among the earliest in the Washington, D.C., region.
Fairfax's "opt-out" program - unique in the Washington area - is a first step toward giving county teenagers additional rest. Parents and advocates for later start times have been arguing for years that early school starts are detrimental to teen health and that even an extra hour or two of sleep could make a real difference. Critics have said that changing the schools' schedules would be expensive and a logistical nightmare, requiring more buses and more time spent battling traffic on the country's most congested roads.
School Board member Sandy Evans said the program is a "modest step" in her quest to push back the first bell in high schools by at least one hour after years of failed board attempts to change start times across the county.
Evans said that the senior opt-out program was created after a February School Board meeting and that the program formalizes an unofficial practice parents had employed. For years, Evans said, some students got out of first-period classes after their parents received a note from a doctor citing health reasons requiring their children to get more sleep.
She said the board embraced the idea because it does not cost anything and does not include any complicated changes to bus schedules. Parents were notified of the program in August, but many families missed its quiet unveiling this fall.
School officials said the program was intentionally small in scope, but students have helped drive its popularity, with some schools seeing dozens of students sign up. School officials said the program will be offered to more students next year.
Julie Halse said her son, a senior who is a cross-country runner and gifted student, dropped an ungraded Advanced Placement seminar class and has benefitted from the opportunity to get about 90 minutes of extra sleep.
"I see a huge difference in him," Halse said, noting that he's performing well at school. "His energy level is up, and he's not nearly as tired as before."
bc-senior-skip