A majority of the comments received so far on Issaquah School District Superintendent Ron Thiele’s new bell times proposal for the 2017-2018 year have been positive, according to Thiele.

Thiele put out the proposal on Oct. 25, with an announcement that the public could send comments to BellTime@issaquah.wednet.edu through Monday, Nov. 7. Thiele’s proposal shifts high school and middle school start and end times approximately half an hour later than the current times, and unites all elementary schools apart from Grand Ridge under one 9:10 a.m. start time, instead of the current staggered 8:30 a.m. and 9:15 a.m. start times.

The motive for changing start times is so that teenagers, whose bodies, studies show, are naturally wired to stay up later, can get a healthier amount of sleep, rather than being forced to get up at the crack of dawn.

“I do believe our kids would benefit from more sleep,” Thiele said. “I think it would be healthier.”

According to Thiele’s plan, the high schools would start at 8 a.m. and finish at 2:52 p.m., the middle school’s day would go from 8:10 a.m. to 2:35 p.m. and the elementary schoolers would all go from 9:10 a.m. to 3:35 p.m. Grand Ridge Elementary School would have classes from 8:55 a.m. to 3:20 p.m.

Currently, the regular school day for Issaquah, Skyline and Liberty high schools lasts from 7:25 a.m. to 2:16 p.m., and the school day at the district’s middle schools lasts from 7:40 a.m. to 2:05 p.m. The elementary schools go from 8:30 a.m. to 2:55 p.m., or from 9:15 a.m. to 3:40 p.m., depending on the school.

A week after sending out the proposal, Thiele said that he received around 350 emails from parents (280 just within the first couple of days), with around 65 to 70 percent of the messages lauding the proposal.

“Overwhelmingly most people support the choice,” Thiele said. “Some would like it to be more aggressive, but they understand it’s a compromise, a step in the right direction.”

One of the biggest complaints, which Thiele reported had been brought up in about 50 emails, was that moving bell times causes problems for parents who need to make child care arrangements.

“I recognize that this is going to create some problems for some families,” Thiele said, expressing that he does not wish to be “tone deaf to the issues this creates” for households where both parents work full-time or for households with single parents who do not have someone around the house to watch the kids.

The main reason that Thiele said he would make a decision about the 2017-2018 school year before Dec. 1 was “to give people more time to arrange childcare and work schedules.”

Other complaints centered around the high schools getting out later, noting that this would push after-school activities and part-time jobs quite late, especially when it gets dark so early.

“A lot of this is about the northern latitudes,” Thiele said. “We have short days. We’re in the dark a lot.”

The district had previously put out a more drastic proposal in autumn 2015 to have the high schools run from 9 a.m. to 3:55 p.m., the middle schools from 9:10 a.m. to 3:35 p.m. and the elementary schools begin earlier at 8 a.m.

However, during the district’s online Thought Exchange and meetings in spring 2016, the district was able to hear the concerns of parents, staff and students, and went back to the drawing board with their thoughts in mind.

A year later, Thiele is confident that he has included the input received during the Thought Exchange and the meetings in this new proposal, but still notes that the decision requires some give and take.

“It’s a challenge. This is clearly a compromise,” he said.

Those with opinions on the new proposal still have time to share their views with the district. According to Thiele, the bell times topic is “still an open discussion” and he will still be reading every email that comes in.

The discussion of moving to later start times has been going on since the early 2000s, Thiele said. At that time, a task force was created to come up with recommendations, but ultimately the district decided not to change anything.

“It’s hard. When you start tinkering with this, you upset a lot of things,” Thiele said.

Then in 2014, the American Academy of Pediatrics released a study that brought the later start times discussion back into the spotlight, not just in the Issaquah School District, but in the entire nation.

The study stated that once kids hit their teen years, it becomes harder for them to fall asleep before 11 p.m. because of their bodies’ natural sleep cycles; it recommended that middle and high schools start at 8:30 a.m. or later so that teens are not heading to class on six hours of sleep. Teens need more sleep than adults, and ideally should be getting eight-and-a-half to nine-and-a-half hours of shut-eye per night.

“That study put a lot of science behind it,” Thiele said. “This is a real trend happening across the country. We’re moving to where some people already were.”

The study also noted that kids who get too little sleep are more likely to engage in alcohol and drugs and less likely to excel in school, eat nutritious foods and exercise.

Since the study was released, the Center for Disease Control and the American Medical Association have also come forward to advocate later school times for adolescents.

The deadline for submitting emails on the bell times proposal is the end of the day on Monday, Nov. 7. Thiele anticipates making his official decision before Thanksgiving, though he said he may be ready as soon as Thursday, Nov. 10.