Significant Percentage of Start-School-Later Petition Signers from Silver Spring
Check out the latest information on the Start School Later movement in Montgomery County.
The movement to push back public school start times in Montgomery County may have strong support from parents in Silver Spring and Takoma Park, according to a study analyzing the Start School Later Montgomery County petition.
The petition urging a later school start time of 8:15 a.m. gathered more than 10,000 signatures in 12 weeks through the fall of 2012 and early January 2013. According to a report released today by the Lloyd Society, a nonprofit research center, support for the petition came from across Montgomery County and corresponded with population distribution.
About 21 percent of petition-signers live in Silver Spring and Takoma Park, according to the study. Another 27 percent came from the Rockville and Potomac areas; 25 percent came from Bethesda and Chevy Chase. Other supporters came from Gaithersburg, Germantown, Wheaton, Kensington, Olney and northern parts of the county.
Read the Start School Later blog post about the recent study on Patch here.
Some 1.6 percent of the petition signers were not Montgomery County residents.
“Signers included school faculty and staff, students, parents of students, sleep experts, doctors and mental health professionals,” the report stated.
“Of the few residing outside the county, some currently teach in Montgomery County Public Schools. Others have family members in the county, are former MCPS students or parents or are health practitioners that treat county residents.”
As a result of the petition, presented to the MCPS Board of Education on Dec. 11, Superintendent Joshua Starr established a work group to study the possibility of later school start times in the county.
"This is a very complex issue and I want to make sure we have a full understanding of the impact that school bell times have on student achievement and other areas of development," Starr said, announcing the work group. “A change in school bell times would affect every student in Montgomery County, and would have a significant impact on our budget and operations.”
