Fairfax Co. to launch pilot program for later middle school start times
Fairfax County Public Schools is crafting a plan to have a few middle schools start later in the morning as soon as next school year.
At Thursday’s school board meeting, the board approved a plan to have Superintendent Michelle Reid craft a program to make schedule changes at as many Mason District middle schools as possible. Poe, Holmes and Glasgow middle schools are all in the Mason District, and it’s the lone part of the county where middle schools include sixth graders.
The plan calls for Reid to create the pilot program and provide details to the board by April 10. It has to be cost-neutral, and should minimize start time changes at high schools in the Mason District. The change would be made at “as many of the Mason District middle schools as possible for implementation in the 2025-26 school year.”
For years, leaders in the Northern Virginia school division have been working to figure out how to have middle school kids start class later in the morning. The county hired a firm to study various ways the school system could push back those start times, but those findings were first presented to the school board earlier this year.
Critics of the current 7:30 a.m. start times for middle schools argue it doesn’t offer kids enough time to sleep and leads to them being tired and distracted during class.
“You’ve heard the surveys, the anecdotes from teachers who are sharing that their students are sleepy in the morning,” Board member Ricardy Anderson said. “I know, I have middle schoolers of my own, and they are not quite awake to really take advantage of all of the academic instruction that’s happening until second or third period.”
In October 2014, the school board changed high school start times to 8 a.m. or later. That’s when middle schools shifted to start at 7:30 a.m. And though the then-superintendent vowed to consider starting middle schools later, changes haven’t been made.
The decision to change middle school start times is operational, Board member Melanie Meren said, and “this should not be a decision of the board.”
“Let’s see what happens in Mason, get our kiddos some more sleep, and then we will move on to make it happen as soon as we can,” Meren said.
Irina Avilova, who spoke at a recent board meeting and said her son attends Rachel Carson Middle School in Herndon, described waking her son up at 6 a.m., getting to the bus stop by 6:40 a.m. and still seeing him “not having gotten enough sleep on any given school morning.”
Families have been asking “that not a single additional school year goes by without a change of the unreasonable, unhealthy schedule, which negatively impacts not only our kids’ health and their immune systems, but as a result, also their academic performance,” Avilova said.