In Arundel Boardroom, Student Has True Clout

High schools start at 7:17 a.m. in Anne Arundel, the earliest opening bell in Maryland. Momentum has been building for several years to change that, a movement driven by parents along the Gov. Ritchie Highway corridor from Annapolis to Severna Park.

Those who favor the change cite sleep studies that show adolescents should sleep longer and later than adults. Ideally, teenagers should sleep well past dawn and start school at 9 o'clock or later.

But almost no one in Anne Arundel seems to support anything quite so radical. If high school started two hours later, it would end two hours later, which would mean less time for after-school sports, band practice and jobs.

Instead, attention has focused on an 8 o'clock start, a change that would afford students another 40 minutes of sleep without moving dismissal too far into the afternoon hours. The $4 million cost would buy the extra buses and drivers needed to carry the same number of students in less time; an earlier start allows each bus to make more trips.

"We spend 4.8 percent of our budget on transportation, and that's low," Snider said. "We have the earliest start time in the state. That says something."

Short of a scientific survey, there's no telling how many parents and students favor the change.

Sara Naeseth, a senior at Broadneck High School in Annapolis, considers 7:17 a.m. "a really random and ridiculous time. I have to wake up at 5:40 to get to school."

But Erin Kodis, a junior at Chesapeake High School in Pasadena, offered this contrary kernel of high-school wisdom: "A lot of people who sleep in school aren't going to not sleep in school just because you start school an hour later."

Snider has been collecting such opinions all year, in conversation and through an Internet site she created last summer for the purpose of initiating student debate on issues of the day. A discussion thread on school start times at http://www.aacstudents.org had 51 postings as of Friday, most in favor of the change, and had been viewed 711 times.

Among school board members, Snider's lead ally in advocating for later school hours is Paul Rudolph, a retired engineer four times her age. "I put two girls through school," Rudolph said, "and I know how hard it was getting them out the door in the morning."

Likely opponents, when the item comes to the board for discussion on Jan. 18, include Johnson, a parent from Davidsonville who says she would be hard-pressed to spend $4 million on school start times when there are teacher salaries and benefits to be paid.

"If it comes down to that choice," she said, "it's a pretty simple one for me."

Snider's job over the next two weeks -- amid college decisions and AP homework -- is to build her case.

"I wish I could go into a class and take pictures," she said. "First period, half the class is asleep. I think that if other board members could just be there and see it, they would change their minds."