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Saved by the bell: Orange County school district won't change school start times -- for now

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — The Orange County School Board  has elected to keep its current schedule after considering changing school start times next year.

The district asked students and parents to weigh in on four possibilities including making classes start earlier, later or staying the same.

On Thursday, the school board met to discuss its options and decided to go back to the drawing board after none of its options received overwhelming support.

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The district received nearly 32,000 responses from students, parents and teachers on its latest survey on the topic.

One option was moving all schools back 20 minutes.

Another was moving high schools back to 8:45 a.m., which came in as the least popular.

The most popular option, gaining the support of 52 percent of those who responded to the survey, is keeping start times the same.

"Right now, I'm already used to the time, like waking up and coming at the time it is right now," student Noe Rubio said.

The district has to spread out the times for elementary, middle and high schools so each bus can make multiple runs and with no more money to go toward buses, the district elected to leave schedule the way they are following Thursday's meeting.

"Until we can find a solution to the funding problem, we can't come up with a schedule that I think is better than what we have," said Orange County School Board Chair Teresa Jacobs.

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