By Stacey Wells ’15

Beginning in the 2015-2016 school year, high school start times will be pushed back twenty minutes, changing the beginning of the school day from 7:25 to 7:45. Middle schools will start 20 minutes later and elementary schools will begin 10 minutes later. Supporters of this change say that later start times will help teens get more sleep, be healthier and do better academically; while critics, such as the majority of MCPS teachers, see no correlation between later start times and academic improvement.

This implementation of later start times comes at no cost to the school district. Last year, Starr proposed that high schools should begin school at 8:15 in order to allow students more sleep. This proposal was struck down due to its high cost of $21 million a year.