Later for Excellence in Education Proposal. The group, whose goal is to move Fairfax County, Virginia, middle and high schools to later start times, was founded in 2003 by cochairs Phyllis Payne and Sandy Evans. Payne, a public health educator, and Evans, a journalist, were introduced by a mutual friend who knew of their common interest in the problems that stem from early school start times.

Phyllis Payne’s interest in the issue actually started a number of years before she met Sandy Evans. Even though her own children were in elementary school at the time, she was concerned to see high school students waiting in the dark for the school bus every morning. Worried for them, she also projected ahead to when her own kids would have to wait in the dark. To all of that she added the fact that she wasn’t an early riser, and looked ahead, with dread, to the time that she would be getting up well before dawn to get her own kids out the door.

As she thought about the problem, she began to read and learn more about it. She discovered that safety and what she calls “quality of life issues” weren’t the only concerns. Because kids had to catch the bus so early, they had to wake up very early, most likely after going to sleep fairly late; teens were becoming sleep deprived, and sleep deprivation was harming them in a multitude of ways.

When Payne and Evans met, both had come to the conclusion that teenagers needed more sleep and that an important way to make that happen was to have schools start later in the morning. They also realized that sleep deprivation was a community-wide problem and that