Fairfax County considers major school start time changes: Here are the 3 options

Well, an upcoming vote could impact tens of thousands of students in northern Virginia. Fairfax County Public Schools getting closer to maybe changing school start times. Stephanie, this morning, he's at Kings Park Elementary down in Springfield with the latest for us. Steph? Yeah, good morning. Steve, Jacqueline. So this is a conversation that school leaders in Fairfax County Public Schools, they've been having for a few years now. And the conversation started with wanting to get middle schoolers better rest at night. Actually, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, they recommend that middle schoolers and high schoolers start at 830. Or later in the morning. So there was a big update in this conversation yesterday. Staff with a school board work session, they laid out three options. Option one is an elementary first option that consolidates to just two tier start times for elementary school, 7:30 or 8 a.m. Middle school, it would start at 9.20, and high school would start at 8.40 under this option. FCPS saying that it fully aligns with sleep recommendations. This would also require a $1.6 million annual investment for more bus drivers, but school leaders said they could minimize costs by slowing down the bus decommissioning schedule. Option two is a 30-minute shift at all levels at no cost. That could, though, have elementary school starting at 9 and 9:50 in the morning. With partial sleep science alignment, and then there's a third option, leave as is. The superintendent, she did commend staff for trying to drive the cost down as much as possible. She says there will need to be a discussion on school field and facility use if times change. Also this. I know there's some discussion at the state level, too, here, or of the prospective possibility of some type of decisions, which I just think it's worth noting. I don't know what the ins and outs of that are, but whatever shift we want to make, I think we only want to make it once. I can tell you, school officials, they did study all kinds of different things, including sun angles and visibility at different hours. Now, there's two dates that we want to make sure parents are looking out for. December 3rd is when the options will be formally introduced at a school board meeting, and then December 17th is when the school board will be voting on the options. Guys? Steph, thanks.