FHS Grad Introduces Statewide School Start Time Legislation
As a freshman in 2018, Zorianna Petrosyan spent her mornings at Falmouth High School trying to shake off the fog of tiredness that hung in the air at 7:22 each morning.
Compared to an 8:15 AM start time for Lawrence Junior High School, Ms. Petrosyan found that she and her peers were struggling with the early morning start time of 7:22, which often has students waking up at 6 AM or earlier.
“During freshman and sophomore years, this was in the back of my head,” Ms. Petrosyan said. “I was like, ‘Yeah, school starts way too early, but somebody will take care of it. I’m sure it’s being discussed.’”
As the years passed, early mornings did not get much easier, and it became clear to Ms. Petrosyan that if anyone was going to discuss and mitigate the problem, it had to start with her.
Fast-forward to now, and Ms. Petrosyan, who graduated from Falmouth High last week, has filed with Representative Dylan Fernandes her first piece of legislation, a bill that would push back school start times statewide, through her senior year internship with his office.
“The whole idea for the bill came from my own passion to start school later and my experience as a student who went to Falmouth High School and had to experience a 7:22 AM start time,” she said. “It’s completely not in line with the science on the issue and... just caused me a lot of stress and was really not optimal for my well-being, and it wasn’t optimal for other students, like my friends and other people I talked to.”
During sophomore year, Ms. Petrosyan applied for and was selected to become her school’s leadership ambassador through the Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership program, a national organization for high school sophomores that is dedicated to providing youth across the country with the training and education they need to become young leaders. Ms. Petrosyan was able to attend the two-day program virtually, as it took place in 2020, and through it was able to open a discourse on later school start times with like-minded youth leaders. Ms. Petrosyan met another attendee, a student from Melrose, who told her that her school had recently switched to a later start time. The other student, named Ruby, suggested that Ms. Petrosyan create some kind of club to jumpstart her school start time initiative.
As the two started working on their service projects, Ms. Petrosyan focused on school start time. Soon enough, her research led her to an organization called Start School Later, a nationwide nonprofit that encourages concerned community members to start their own local chaapters, which is just what Ms. Petrosyan did at FHS during her junior year in December 2020.
Eleven students joined the club, which mainly focused on getting FHS to start later. The School Start Times Team spoke with community stakeholders and experts, including teachers, athletic directors, and pediatricians to gauge public opinion on the issue. But Ms. Petrosyan said they quickly realized that if she wanted FHS to start later, the whole district would have to change start times and that proved to be a much harder feat.
“I found that we really had to switch gears [because] maybe focusing locally would take much longer than I thought, and I really wanted to maximize my time while I’m here before I go off to college,” said Ms. Petrosyan, who is heading off to the University of Vermont in the fall to pursue a combined major in music and business with a hopeful double major in political science. “After junior year we learned a lot—me and my chapter members—but I was like ‘there’s not much that we can do here, and it might be time to switch gears.’ That’s where senior year comes in.”
Seniors at FHS are given the opportunity to take an internship class, something that Ms. Petrosyan was excited about. After indicating her interests were in music and politics, she was able to secure a remote internship with Rep. Fernandes’ office. She worked closely with Carlie Clarcq, legislative aide to Rep. Fernandes, who told her that she could get working on some projects they already had or could start her own if she was interested.
“Right away I was like ‘Yes, yes, I am. What about starting school later?’” Ms. Petrosyan asked. “And she was like, ‘Yeah, that sounds really interesting.’”
So began the research legislative work, which included an in-depth policy memo on the hows, whys, and whats of the bill, written mainly by Ms. Petrosyan herself. They ultimately decided to write a mandate bill, which, if passed, would mandate that all schools in Massachusetts start no earlier than 8:30 AM.
“We didn’t just start writing the bill right away because I was going to be the one writing it, with [Carlie] guiding me and telling me all the things I need to include and filling me in on the legislative process as well—which was really enlightening and awesome,” Ms. Petrosyan said.
The policy memo took a few months to write but gave Ms. Petrosyan time to dive deep into her research to find out what legislation currently exists and what the supporting science says. Ms. Petrosyan was also able to draw inspiration from a colleague she met through Start School Later named Tilia Jacobs, who heads the Framingham chapter. The two would meet periodically to discuss policies and strategies, which ultimately proved to be pivotal to Ms. Petrosyan’s mission.
“At one of our meetings she brought up the idea that although local and grassroots work is really important, it’s often more efficient to do a bill or something like that,” Ms. Petrosyan said. “So, she was like, ‘Why don’t we start writing a bill and figure it out?’ We talked about it and we weren’t really sure what we were doing but she came up with a little draft, and I kept that in the back of my mind and was like, ‘That’s a really good idea but I don’t know what to do. I don’t know anything about legislation.’ But the internship was the perfect place to start it back up again.”
One piece of current legislation from California was crucial in her writing of the bill, Ms. Petrosyan said.
“It’s a California bill which passed in 2019 and goes into effect later this year in the fall for the upcoming school year,” she said. “That bill is the first bill to statewide mandate that schools can’t start earlier than 8:30 AM, so I thought that was a good time to go with.”
Ms. Petrosyan continued to edit and tweak the bill over a few months and sought feedback from a number of stakeholders, including teachers, students, two statewide leaders from the Start School Later organization, and Dr. Judith Owens of Boston Children’s Hospital.
“At that point, after I got all the feedback and made our final edits, that’s when I was kind of done with the bill and was just waiting for it to be filed,” she said. “It actually got filed on my last day of school, which was super cool.”
For Ms. Petrosyan, the filing of the bill was like a full-circle moment. She is well aware that the change in school start times will not affect her as a recent graduate, and even though it started with her, it was never really about her, but all of the students who will come after her.
“It’s really, really incredible,” she said. “The fact that this one piece of paper could potentially affect everybody in the whole state is awesome because it streamlines everything for all the schools. It eases logistical anxieties about that for school districts and it just helps Massachusetts students out a lot. Obviously, for some people’s families, it might be difficult to adjust [but] I know that it’ll do much more good than the minimal logistical disruption at first. I’m just really excited to see the benefits if it does pass.”
Because the bill is considered a late file, it likely will not make it through the Legislature before the session ends in July. Ms. Petrosyan said that they do plan to refile in January for the next legislative session. Although her internship has ended, she will be staying on to handle anything related to the Start Schools Later bill.
Even if the bill does not pass—although she hopes it does—Ms. Petrosyan said she is just happy to get people talking about and informed on the issue, which is nearly half the battle.
“I feel like there’s a lot of different policy issues that people talk about in education but this doesn’t always get talked about on a large scale,” she said. “But when you become involved in it and you’re a student yourself and you read the studies that have come out and you understand the benefits of starting school later, how it improved not only academic performance but physical and mental health and well-being for students, it’s a great logistical thing that can be fixed to improve so much. And I want to just shake people and be like, ‘This is something you should definitely care about.’”
Ms. Petrosyan is grateful to all of her colleagues and peers that have helped advocate for this bill and is looking forward to continuing moving forward with it.
“When the time comes, hopefully when there’s a public hearing scheduled on this, I want to be the first to testify and continually advocate for it,” she said. “Anything I can do for the bill is what I’m really excited to do.”