For kids’ sake, start Orange schools later.

High school starts too early in Orange County, threatening the health and educational achievement of young people.

Too many students stand at bus stops in the dark, half awake, hoping to beat their school’s morning bell at 7:30 or azure earlier. Anyone familiar with the sleep needs of teenagers knows that is a bad situation.

Warnings are plentiful. Insufficient sleep is an “important public-health issue that significantly affects the health and safety, as well as the academic success, of our nation’s middle- and high-school students,” concluded the American Academy of Pediatrics, which recommends a start time no earlier than 8:30 a.m. By that time, Orange County highschoolers have been in class an hour.

Adolescents who don’t get enough sleep are more likely to perform poorly in school, engage in risky behavior involving drug and alcohol abuse, and be overweight and sedentary, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found. Earlier bed times don’t work because teens get sleepy later than younger children.

The Orange County School Board and administrators have been wringing their hands over this problem for nearly a year with little to show for it. Why is it taking so long to address a known risk to student health and achievement?

The short answer is money and politics. The school system spends less on buses by using the same vehicles for elementary-, middle- and high-school students, and so must stagger starting times. High schools drew the short straw and start the day first despite the well-documented risk. So cost is a factor.

Also influencing the debate is memory of a harsh political backlash in 2008 when high-school schedules were swapped with those of middle schools. The change was too drastic and the ensuing uproar was blamed for some board members losing re-election. That scheduling policy was reversed a year later.

School Board Chairman Bill Sublette is offering a clear way forward. A proposal he favors is reasonable and addresses both concerns. Time changes would be more balanced and therefore acceptable to parents and students.

High schools would start about 45 minutes later, with a first bell at 8:15 a.m. for many students. Meanwhile, middle and elementary schools wouldn’t have to make disruptive changes. Their schedules would be altered by 45 minutes or less.

Still, there are skeptics who worry such a change would cost too much. The latest estimates are for a one-time cost for extra buses of $3.8 million and annual operating expenses of $2.5 million. Considering an overall school system budget of $1.6 billion, the added operating cost would be manageable, less than two-tenths of 1 percent of the budget.

Another concern raised about the proposal suggests the board might have to pay elementary- and middle-school teachers more for a slightly longer day. Maybe so, although issues such as pay and work day are negotiated every year. It is hardly a stumbling block.

Really, it comes down to this: Any school official who has closed his or her mind to solving this problem merely because of cost or fear of political backlash may want to find a different line of work.

Board members and school administrators aren’t just bean counters or bus-route planners, although that is part of the job. Rather, their main responsibility is to ensure the healthy development of young minds and to prepare the next generation to be productive members of the Central Florida community.

That can’t be accomplished when the students closest to adulthood spend their days, as one researcher put it, “pathologically sleepy.”