At Monday afternoon’s Site Council meeting, student representatives from the Stressed Out Students Committee (SOS) presented their idea of altering the current bell schedule to allow for a later school start time every day.

The goal of the Stressed Out Students Committee is to suggest new policies that have the intention of alleviating student stress.

Olivia Diamond, sophomore class Site Council representative, and Jenna Lose, junior Site Council representative were at the meeting to present the idea of pushing back the school day’s start time.

“The idea is to start later but not push back the end time,” Diamond said. “We want to find a bell schedule that we really like before we change anything. We’re just thinking about the idea right now.”

Diamond and Lose stressed the fact that their idea is only in the preliminary stages of discussion, but that they have already begun to look into different possibilities for a new bell schedule.

“One of the possible ideas for the new schedule is to increase the number of block days in one week by incorporating a block schedule on Monday and Tuesday as well as the regular block days of Wednesday and Thursday,” Lose said in her portion of the presentation.

“By having a later start with block days on Monday and Tuesday as well as the other days, later in the week, students would be less stressed because they would be able to [better] manage their time,” said Diamond. “Students would be less stressed about homework over the weekends.”

Parents at the meeting generally supported the suggestion of a later start, but multiple concerns were raised about the impact of a new schedule, specifically the possibility of an increase in the stress level of student athletes. Students on a sports team often miss the later part of the school day in order to attend a game, but remain responsible for completing all of their work. Parents made the argument that if the end time of the school day was shifted back as a result of a later start time, student athletes would miss more school than necessary, and the intentions of reducing stress would backfire on student athletes.

In response to this argument, Diamond emphasized that they want to leave the end time as it is, and she also mentioned the fact that student athletes have the option of requesting a seventh prep in their schedule.

“It [having a later end to the school day] would be harder,” said freshman Kevin Ward, who plays on a Paly basketball team. “But it depends on the subject that you have seventh period.”

Student athletes with a core class, such as math or science, during seventh period, often encounter greater stress because they miss classes that are more difficult to make up. Diamond and Lose mentioned that the administration would have to make an effort to avoid placing student athletes in these core classes so late in the day.

“I think that having the schedule rotate so that the last period of the day is not always seventh could help,” Diamond said. “If it was all blocked in a way that there was not a seventh period every day it would help because student athletes would not always miss seventh period.”

According to Diamond, the SOS is still brainstorming other ideas of how to alleviate student stress, and that delaying the start time is just one of the ideas they can pursue. However, Diamond did point out that adjusting the start time would be a very congenial approach to the majority of the student body.

“I think that pretty much everyone, especially students, is a proponent of starting school later,” Diamond said.