There’s still time to weigh in on whether the Issaquah School District should start school later for students.

The Issaquah School Board is expected to consider later bell times soon, but continues to collect public input. The board reviewed input gathered from parents, guardians, students and staff so far at its Wednesday night meeting, after press time.

An online comment form will collect input from the community through 11 p.m. Jan. 28. Comments can additionally be emailed to BellTime@issaquah.wednet.edu.

Superintendent Ron Thiele directed district staff to examine later school start times after two area parents, child psychiatrist Dea Barnett and Allison May, collected more than 1,500 signatures on a MoveOn.org petition in spring 2015 requesting later times.

Barnett posited that early start times run counter to teenagers’ naturally late-rising circadian rhythms and lead to a host of mental, physical and emotional disruptions caused by sleep deprivation.

Thiele imposed a number of requirements on late-start proposals by staff, including the preservation of the tiered bus system and that costs associated with the change be “fiscally responsible.”

Staff came back with a plan that included 8 a.m. start times for elementary, morning kindergarten and morning preschool students, a 9 a.m. start time for high school students and a 9:10 a.m. start time for middle school students.

Wednesday start times would be pushed to 10:25 a.m. for middle schools and 10:10 a.m. for high schools.

Recent school board meetings have seen pushback from opponents to the proposal in public comment. At the Dec. 9 meeting, several parents and some students argued the change would mean less family time, as well as less time to juggle jobs, extracurriculars, advanced classes and homework.

And on Jan. 13, some teachers asked the board to consider the additional strain to staff.

Elizabeth Lund, an English teacher in the International Baccalaureate program at Skyline High School in Sammamish, said that later school start times would roughly double her commute time and force her to second-guess her continued employment in the district.

“The change to a 9 a.m. to 3:55 p.m. day would make it extremely difficult for me to stay,” she said. “… I would be facing up to an hour [to travel to Skyline] in the morning and an hour and 15 minutes to get home.

“… There are quite a few of us who work here but don’t live in Issaquah and working here has worked for us because of the current schedule.”

A schedule change as early as the 2016-2017 school year could also hurt working parents in the district, Issaquah High School English teacher Shannon Henderson said.

“Finding childcare, as many of you know, is one of the most stressful things about being a working parent,” Henderson said. “… When I first heard about this proposal in October, I called my son’s onsite afterschool care about availability and they told me they were full until 2019.

“… Changing bell times so drastically is going to have a profound impact on the schedules and arrangements that working families have established for themselves.”

But Jonathan Grudin, a Microsoft researcher and parent of adolescent daughters in the district, urged the school board to look at the “overwhelming” data in support of later start times. The district’s Healthy Youth Survey revealed a pattern of sleep deprivation and lack of school enjoyment compared to state averages, Grudin said.

He also pointed to the comments of Columbia, Missouri, school administrators in an article published by education news website The Seventy Four in early January tracking the results of 9 a.m. school start times implemented in 2013.

In that article, Columbia Superintendent Peter Stiepleman said out-of-school suspensions had dropped by 1,000 per year from 2012 and that graduation rates had climbed from 82.7 percent to 90.2 percent.

“I’m very sympathetic to the problems we’ve been hearing about,” Grudin said. “But I don’t think that blaming the students for not studying efficiently is actually a great approach. It’s also just possible, if you look at the data from other countries and from other schools, it’s just possible one reason the students are having to come after school to talk to teachers is they’re not awake when they’re in the classes.”

If the Issaquah School Board approves later school start times, they will follow in the footsteps of the Bellevue and Seattle school districts.

The Bellevue School Board approved an 8:30 a.m. start time for high school students on Jan. 19. The Seattle School District approved 8:45 a.m. start times for its high schools and a portion of its middle and elementary schools in November.