In hopes of improving student mental health, the Mason school system is planning to start the day 30 minutes later, beginning with next school year.

Middle and high school students will begin at 7:45 a.m. instead of the current 7:15 a.m., said system spokeswoman Tracey Carson. For elementary students in grades three through six, the system is considering two options for later starts, and parents have until Jan. 31 to comment.

The American Psychological Association and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have urged school systems to adopt later start times because students, especially teenagers, need more sleep to do better in school. Carson said that concern was the key factor in the Mason decision.

“What we hear from our families themselves and the medical community is that the anxiety and depression students are facing and other kinds of factors are reaching a critical point for our district,” she said.

Mason High School, the largest in Ohio with 5,200 students, has “a little bit of a competitive culture, and what we’d like to think of as the instructional pieces may be playing into facets of mental health. It’s just one step. As a district, we thought it’s important to put a stake in the ground.”

More:Is more sleep part of the answer to reducing youth suicides?

Carson said the school system had studied later start times for more than a year. "We were really trying to listen to our students and families who’ve been trying to bring this to our attention.”

The two options under discussion for elementary schools would also change start times. The first option is for third through sixth graders to start at 8:55 a.m. The second option would start fifth and sixth graders at 8:55 and third and fourth graders at 9:10 a.m.

Currently, third graders start at 9:10 a.m.; fourth, fifth and sixth graders start at 8:05 a.m.