To the editor:

Last week Mr. Leigh argued in essence that we should postpone implementing school start time change — yet again — this time because we must pay for a new middle school first. While I fully respect his right to voice an opinion, I would also like to offer my own as to why this approach has at least 3 crucial logical flaws, and why it is really just falling prey to the sweet seduction of procrastination.

First, the hook for his argument is reasonable on the surface: as a community we really should embrace the need to buy a new middle school. The flaw lies in not seeing that this expense comes in the form of a 25 year bond.  If you put off start time change again this year due to middle school costs, then logically the same excuse holds for next year, and the next, and the year after that... and so forth. Undoubtedly there is a minority in town that would welcome such an indefinite deferment, and for such a purpose any excuse will do. Mr. Leigh wrote against changing start times last school year and writes again with the same goal but a slightly different rationale this year. No doubt some familiar others will find new reasons to object next year, but this simply becomes procrastination in the face of a well-grounded decision by a majority of the school board.

The second item I would like to respectfully, but also quite firmly, differ on is Mr. Leigh's labeling of the start time change as a "nice to have." There is nothing about trying to improve a critical aspect of students' social and emotional wellbeing that is an indulgence. In last year's Challenge Success survey the students spoke with a clear and honest voice — by their own reports they are getting far too little sleep compared to what pediatricians recommend. With evidence like this, the start time change isn't a nice to have, it's a "should have had already." As adults we should embrace the responsibility for changing the system to come into the — minimum — standard that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends of no earlier than 8:30 for the high school.

Finally, an argument for deferment based on the middle schools' costs is flawed because it makes very little sense to go through the expense of building the infrastructure for a world class education, and then cheat ourselves of our full return on investment by running it at sub-optimal times. If students are to get the most out of what we are laboring to offer them, we should give them a fair opportunity to fully wake up and participate in it at their best. Rationalizing the homework load and running the schools at physiologically reasonable times lets common sense and science guide the way to sustaining Barrington as a world class educational environment. Voting to do the right thing and then putting off actually doing it again and again just role-models an all-too-common educational failing: procrastination. Instead we should show our kids that we can "accept the outcome of an election," and have the integrity to step up and follow through with our collective decisions.

Scott Douglas

Barrington