Photo: A little more sleep for high school students is being proposed by superintendents whose schools participate in the Middlesex League.
Belmont High students shouldn’t just yet set forward the time their alarms go off in the morning, but it appears the Belmont School District will join a growing number of districts who participate in the Middlesex League athletic conference to study a proposal to allow high schools to start later in the day to accommodate the needs of teens for greater sleep.
Sources say Belmont Superintendent John Phelan will announce at tonight’s School Committee meeting, Tuesday, March 22, that he supports a proposal written by Burlington Superintendent Dr. Eric Conti that would begin the propose of possibly allowing each high school to start the school day up to an hour later than their current schedule.
A Belmont High student’s day runs from 7:35 a.m. to 2:25 p.m.
In his proposal, Conti echos calls by the growing number of later-start-time activists who cite studies showing many high school students are sleep deprived which effects their social and emotional behavior and their ability to learn.
Under the proposal, data would be compiled in the fall of 2016, senerios set up and studied before community forums are conducted in each town. Currently, the earliest the proposal would go into effect is the fall of 2018.
The schools in the Middlesex League include:
- Arlington
- Belmont
- Burlington
- Lexington
- Melrose
- Reading
- Stoneham
- Wakefield
- Watertown
- Wilmington
- Winchester
- Woburn
This is a no brainier! Doctor state these kids need 8-10 hours of sleep a night for their growing brain, but how is that possible if they are getting up as early as 5:30a get to school class on time. So at the least they have to be in bed ASLEEP by 9pm. Yeah I do t think so. All for this proposal. Better yet start school at 9 and lessen the homework. Switch places with some of these kids and see how some adult brains would fair through out the day.