Seattle School District (SPS) proposes 3 tier school start times and most elementary schools will start at 7.30am with the new proposal starting September 2022.

https://www.seattleschools.org/.../bel.../bell-time-changes/
 
With the current start time that is 8am, the elementary kids already have problems as its still very early, comparing to the universal school start time which is 8.30 or 9 am in the world.
 
A 7:30 am start means that most kids will need to be on the bus by 6.45 am which means they will need to be awake by 6 am to get ready, rush to eat their breakfast and try to wake up. That is extremely early. To make this up and to avoid sleep deprivation, the children will have to go to bed at 7:30 pm and falls asleep by 8 pm. Considering that working families usually work until 5pm, with commute they can be at home with their kids by 6pm. In tiny 1 hour and a half they have to prepare dinner, eat together and bathe; that leaves no time for playing or spending quality time with the kids.  
 
Our kids already feeling depressed because of having to wake up too early, at 6am to get to the school in time with the current 8am start time.
 
 
On top, the after school care is already big challenge as it is. There is no child care anywhere around most of the schools. Most students including 5 year old kindergarteners have to travel almost 1 hour to get to a child care provider that is hardly found. Now with new release time, working families have to find a childcare starting at 2pm.
 
The current 7.55 am start is already very early for many families and more families might opt to leave Seattle Public Schools if forced to switch to 7.30 am start. Having 3 start times also makes it impossible for families with children in different schools to manage as there is now a 2 hour gap between start/end times and families will need to juggle both before school and after school care. Given that this change is requested to accommodate 20% of students who require transportation, the more optimal solution would be to look into creating better transportation options such as bus routes consolidation between schools and proactive student transportation enrollment to better map the requirements.
In addition, we hear that families who actually use the bus, may not be able to use the bus after all with the new start times as it is more convenient for them too. 
 
Therefore, instead of changing the school times, that would affect thousands of families badly, why cannot SPS change the bus times only? It would be easier solution; just provide one-person care at each school for the kids who arrive school at 7.30am until 8.30am. Then the school start time would be 8.30am for each and every school. There are several other solutions that SPS could come up with, instead of changing the school start time which nobody supports at this point. 
 
In any case, SPS should have asked families opinion, before making unilateral decision that would affect thousands of families. 
Please sign the petition to stop SPS's proposal to change the school start times.
 
Thank you,
 
Elementary School Families