The superintendents of the Mercer Island and Bellevue School Districts have charged the High School Start-Time Committee with conducting a study of the benefits and implications of changing high school start times.
The committee’s membership includes parents and staff members from both school districts in a collaborative feasibility study and in the development of recommendations to the superintendents by June, 2015 for potential implementation in the 2016-17 school year.
The committee read and discussed research on adolescent sleep patterns and the impact of chronic sleep loss. The committee also reviewed a report that summarized the experiences from more than 1,000 schools that moved to a later start time. The following are some findings from the research and reports