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High schools will begin at 9:15 a.m. in the fall following the Juneau School Board's 5-2 vote Tuesday to approve an administration proposal to change school schedules.

As recommended, high schools will start 75 minutes later at 9:15 a.m. and elementary schools will start 75 minutes earlier at 8 a.m. The administration also suggested moving middle school times 30 minutes earlier to 8 a.m. for busing reasons, but board member Andi Story offered a motion to drop the middle school change that the board approved.

The extra busing will cost the district an additional $97,000 a year, a budget revision the board scheduled to address at its next meeting.

The dissenting votes came from Board President Mark Choate and member Joanne Bell-Graves. Choate cited three reasons for opposing the change: a safety concern for putting younger students out on roads during darker hours in the morning, a sense that making this sort of change wouldn't help Juneau's young people compete globally with foreign students willing to study from dawn to dusk, and a sense of skepticism that sleep issues were preventing kids from graduating.

"I've never seen since I've been on board that kids are dropping out of school because they can't wake up. I'm not saying they're not having difficulties, but I haven't found the literature compelling enough," Choate said.

Graves said the changes would cause financial hardships and voiced concern that too many scheduling details had yet to be settled. She offered a motion to enact the changes beginning in the 2011-2012 school year, but it failed in a similar 5-2 vote.

"I don't see the point in prolonging anything. If it's valid and good now, let's make the change now," board member Destiny Sargeant said.

Student representative on the board Maggie Meiners of Thunder Mountain High School also voted against the change, though her vote is symbolic only.

More than a dozen people spoke during the public comment session preceding the vote, mostly in opposition to the schedule changes, which are meant to accommodate teenagers' later-waking sleep cycles brought on by hormonal changes.

The Anchorage polling firm Hellenthal & Associates conducted a telephone survey last month that offered a picture of public opinion on the proposed changes. Of 602 respondents randomly selected from the families of the district's 5,000 students, a majority favored changing the school start times.

In other meeting news, the School Board gave the administration direction to pursue grants worth more than $3 million in federal stimulus money.

The School Board also approved a renewal of an agreement with the Juneau Teen Health Center, a collaboration of six local agencies that operates at sites at Thunder Mountain and Juneau-Douglas high schools. The new agreement has a notable change from past years, in that the center will be allowed to distribute prescription birth control on site.

In the past, the health center had prescribed birth control, but not dispensed it.

Minors must have written parental consent to receive services at the health centers, with the exception per state law of services related to pregnancy and venereal disease. Parents may still withhold consent for all services offered by the center.