On Tuesday, Feb. 10, the MCPS board voted on a plan recommended by superintendent Joshua Starr to push back school start times. Both high school and middle school will start 20 minutes later, and elementary school will start 10 minutes later than their current start times.

As the news of the approved plan spread through WJ, students expressed their opinions.

A WJ senior who wished to remain anonymous felt that the change in start times will not result in a big difference.

“They just wanted to seem like they were doing something to ‘solve’ [the issue of school start times]…But really I think they just wanted people to put this topic to rest,” they said.

However, many students and parents have been pressuring MCPS for some time to push back start times so students can get more sleep. Controversy erupted last summer when Starr decided to not approve an expensive plan that would have pushed back start times by 50 minutes and caused other changes and large financial costs.

In contrast, according to a WJLA article, the results of a survey of 5, 767 MCPS teachers from the Montgomery County Education Association (MCEA), “63 percent [of teachers] supported keeping school bell times where they are right now, while only 23 percent opposed the current bell times.”

Luckily, the approved plan will not cost MCPS any additional money.

“The decision was the least disruptive [choice] during a time where the school system faces a tighter budget and increased enrollment, ” said MCPS school board president Patricia O’Neill, according to an article by WTOP.