Late Start Committee gathers more input
Published 11:58 am Wednesday, May 13, 2015
The High School Start-Time Committee began its greater community outreach on Mercer Island, hosting an informational open house Thursday, May 7 at Islander Middle School.
It was the second meeting of its kind, with a prior meeting taking place in Bellevue late last month.
“We’re doing the information meeting tonight and then we have a really detailed survey coming up that should really give people a chance to drill down what they support, what they don’t support and how it affects different activities,” committee member and parent Paige Behrbaum said. “We’ve talked to all the internal stakeholders and the students and kind of saved the community piece for the end. We just really want people to take the survey and get a lot of participants so we get accurate data on what people are thinking.”
Another parent, Sue Reichert, said she turned out to advocate as a band parent who is aware of the impact later start times would have on the band schedule. She believes high school start times should remain as they are at 8 a.m.
“I understand that the science is out there that teenagers need more sleep, but I’m not sure this is the solution to them grabbing an extra 15 minutes,” Reichert said. “The reason being they all have their own physiology, their own need to perform at school, and they’re going to do what they’re going to do regardless of what the start and end times are. They’re still going to stay up late if they want to get their work done and not get enough sleep.”
Committee member and parent Frances Osman attended both the Bellevue and Mercer Island open houses. She estimated about 80 percent of Bellevue parents were in favor of the change, while 80 percent of Mercer Island parents were against it.
“The feedback we’ve heard from the Bellevue parents was overwhelmingly in favor of changing the start time. They don’t seem to see as many challenges with it as we do,” she said. “But their students are starting at 7:30 a.m. versus 8 a.m. and so I think they really do see more benefit in the fact that they would probably go to 8:30 a.m. which would give them a extra hour.”
The committee made its online survey available Tuesday through the Mercer Island Schools website at www.mercerislandschools.org. Following feedback review, the committee plans to make a recommendation to the School Board in June.
