Oregon lawmakers decided during the 2019 legislative session that Pacific Standard Time had to go. They approved a bill that could drop standard time in favor of daylight saving time for all of Oregon but the portion of Malheur County that is on Mountain time.

It was an ill-thought-out idea, and lawmakers should repeal the law in 2020.

True, the switch — to year-round Pacific daylight time statewide except for that sliver of Malheur County — won’t go into effect until California and Washington have made similar changes. And it won’t happen even then unless Congress gives the three West Coast states the go-ahead. So far, Congress doesn’t seem to have given the idea much serious thought.

So what’s wrong with year-round daylight time?

Kids, particularly kids who go to school.

If you were in your car Friday morning at 7:10 a.m. or so, you no doubt noticed how dark it was. Sunrise Friday wasn’t until 7:40 a.m., and while it wasn’t exactly the dead of night half an hour earlier, it was dark enough to make spotting people in dark clothing difficult.

You might have noticed something else, as well. There were school buses out in Bend, lots of them. They were picking up the youngest students in Bend-La Pine Schools, because elementary school students start class at 8 a.m. Older kids, whose classes generally start around 8:45, are picked up a bit later.

Thus, the district’s youngest, least street-savvy children are boarding buses in near dark. If daylight time were year round, they’d be boarding buses in the pre-dawn twilight until April, and for a chunk of that time, they’d be in the dark.

Yes, changing clocks twice a year can be a hassle, but it’s not much more serious than that. Losing a kindergartner to a motor-vehicle accident in the dark of December is a problem of a whole different magnitude, and the law that makes that more likely should be repealed.