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    Hello, I am a student in the Evergreen school district that is working with other students to oppose a change our district will be making this coming year. Starting next year there will be drastic time changes for school start and end times, their purpose is just so kids get more sleep and do better in school. It sounds good in theory but in reality it causes many problems for students and teachers that I will list shortly. It also is counterintuitive  because after polling students in the Evergreen school district roughly 70% of them said that they would be going to bed later if the start times were later.

     Back to what I was mentioning earlier, one major issue is that Elementary schoolers get out of school earlier than Middle schoolers. Many kids have to stay with their younger siblings after school because their parents have to work late. If older siblings are not back from school earlier like they normally have been before. Their younger siblings will have to get sent to a daycare until the older sibling gets back, which costs a lot of money and will not work for financially challenged families, or parents will have to take time off work to watch their kids.

      Another problem is that with these later times, teachers do not want to stay after school to help kids because they would have to go home very late. School will get out at 4:00 for middle schoolers meaning that if teachers stayed at school for an hour or so to help a child struggling at school, they would end up at home from 5:30 to 8:00pm depending on where they live and how bad rush hour traffic will be.

      Then there is the issue of sports, many kids cannot afford expensive club sports but still want to be active and to feel a part of a group. Luckily our school offers them and all you have to pay is a $15 ASB fee, but next year partly because of how late school gets out, the district has been discussing cutting the sports program. This makes it very hard for kids that cannot afford club sports to be active, but also kids struggle to fit in at school and with the sports program kids have more opportunities to socialize with their peers. Without the exercise and friendships you get out of sports, it is possible that suicides and mental health issues will rise. 

   In a nutshell, there are many issues and very few benefits to the time change in our district and it most of the problems affect majority lower income families. If we get enough signatures we plan on showing this to our school district so they can see how badly this needs to change. Thank you for your time and we heavily appreciate your support