WASHINGTON — 7:25 a.m. is when high school students in Montgomery County Public Schools have to report every day.
On Tuesday, the Board of Education will consider whether to push that time back, and Monday, a rally was held outside the board’s offices urging members to let students sleep in.
Several dozen people attended the event organized by a group of students, parents and teachers called “Save Our Sleep.”
In a YouTube video, the group calls the 7:25 a.m. start time “outdated, unhealthy and dangerous,” because teens are “biologically programmed to stay up later and sleep later.”
At the rally, some people carried signs that read “School Board Please! We Need More ZZzzz’s!” “Developing Minds Need Sleep” and “Help us to succeed, sleep is what we need!”
Many of the students who attended wore pajamas, slippers and robes, and several brought along sleeping bags that they laid out in a grassy area and snuggled inside.
Eleven-year-old Isabel Gottlieb-Nemo said, “I’m eventually going to be in high school, and I don’t want to have to be waking up really early and going to the bus when it’s really dark out.”
Nicole Vanderzon, 13, says she’s already suffering from a lack of sleep: “If I got more sleep in the morning, I would be able to focus better and learn more during the day,”
The school board will consider six options that range from changing all school start times, to making no changes at all. You can read them here.
The agenda for Tuesday’s Board of Education meeting is here.
