The Fairfax County (Va.) school district is considering moving the start time for its high schools from 7:20 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. The change has been spurred by a parents group known as SLEEP (Start Later for Excellence in Education Proposal). This proposal, of course, has led to a massive outcry from other parents. One group goes by the name WAKE Fairfax (Worried About Keeping Extra-curriculars), whose name is pretty self-explanatory.

The impetus for the time change is simple: Lots of scientists say high school kids pay more attention and learn better when they sleep more. Fairfax County schools, which are in the northern Virginia suburbs just outside Arlington and Alexandria, are considered quite good. By high school, kids do a lot of homework, and a fair number of them have evening jobs. Getting up at five or six in the morning leaves them precious little time to sleep.

I'm real sympathetic to this. My high school started at 8:50. But I was in band, which meant I got to school at 7:30 in the fall and at 8 in the winter and spring. I didn't have an evening job and I rarely had homework (Clovis, N.M., schools were more of a football factory than academic preparatory when I attended some 25 years ago), but I was often tired. My best friend worked until midnight most nights, and he slept through his afternoon classes. One teacher actually gave my friend crash space in the classroom--as long as the homework arrived on time.

What could be wrong with changing the time of high school? For starters, there are 168,000 kids in the school district. Every single school would have to change its hours, and every single bus route would have to be adjusted. It could be an administrative nightmare. Or maybe not. The school district says the nightmare scenario won't come true, that the school day would simply start later for all schools. Elementary schools, for example, could start as late as 9:40.

Sounds great. When do we move to Fairfax?

Not so fast, say the swimmers. Parents, coaches and athletes are concerned that the later hours would make it more difficult to secure time at county pools. This is a hypothetical problem, but there aren't many pools in Fairfax (relative to the population, anyway) and those pools would have to adjust their hours as well. Do you want to be the one to tell the Giggling Grannies aquarobics class that their time has been shifted so that high school kids can sleep a bit longer?

The swimmers are hardly the issue, though. A bigger problem is the parents. These schedules have been ingrained in them for years. Family routines have been set in stone, and as children have grown the schedules have been anticipated. This change would throw more than a hundred thousand families into scheduling chaos.

Starting school later means parents leave home later and face more traffic. Rush hour may not mean a lot where you live, but here in the D.C. area it's damned serious. The situation is probably the worst for those in Fairfax trying to get into D.C. Metro services only the far eastern part of the county, and I-66 (which terminates near the Kennedy Center in the district) loses two lanes as it crosses the Beltway on the way to D.C. That daily traffic jam is legendary. It's not hard to imagine that a change of 50 minutes could add 50 minutes to a D.C.-bound commute.

I hear all the folks chanting "transit!" Yes, these Fairfax folks could try to park at the Vienna station and get in on Metro. But again, those 50 minutes often mean the difference between finding a parking place and not. And if you drive 20-30 minutes and then don't have a space, what then?

On the other hand, there is also the notion that high school students should be mature enough to fend for themselves every morning. My first grader gets up, gets dressed and often enough makes his own breakfast (or lunch, depending on his mood). You'd think an 11th grader could do the same. But that's me getting judgmental.

I don't think parents should sublimate all their personal problems for the benefit of their kids. But it seems to me that any change in school schedule could be ironed out within a year. That sounds rough, but consider one of the most popular real estate tricks in the D.C. area (Fairfax included): Buy a "cheap" (say $500,000) 2-bedroom and then add on when you need the space. These additions generally take a few months to complete. Moving your stuff out of your own house and living in a rental (or worse, with relatives) sounds much more hellish to me. The payoff for the addition is a larger and supposedly more livable house, and lots of people seem to be willing to cover those costs.

The same goes for the school time change. Rearranging schedules (and possibly braving a few years of rush hour traffic) seems a slight cost when you consider the benefits of a better-rested child. It seems that the results would be kids who are enjoying school and learning more at some inconvenience to their parents.

That sounds like a reasonable balance to me.

Jon Worley is lucky to reach the bathroom by 7:20 in the morning.