Later start times, a healthy solution

By Bradley Kaplan

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that middle and high schools should start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. They have found that most teenagers cannot fall asleep before 11 p.m., and teenagers need at least 8.5-9.5 hours of sleep in order to live a healthy lifestyle. So with this knowledge, why is it that no meaningful attempt to change the school start time has come about at LM?

Teenagers usually cannot fall asleep until at least 11:00 p.m. because of a biological predisposition of young adults to fall asleep later and wake up later. This trend does not start to reverse until about age 19 in women and 21 in men. In a July 2014 study, researchers from Columbia University and the University of North Carolina analyzed data from 10,000 teenagers and young adults and found that a fifth of the 16-year olds reported getting less than six hours of sleep a night, and those who fell into this category were 20% more likely to be obese by age 21. The study also found that sleep deprivation may cause mood swings, depression, and contribute to substance abuse. In addition, fatigued students could risk having car accidents when driving to school. Sleep deprivation has clearly proven to have a negative impact on student health.

In LM’s case, school starts at 7:30 a.m., and buses pick students up somewhere around 7:00 a.m. I’m going to assume that the average LM student doesn’t actually fall asleep until at least 11:30 p.m. and wakes up at around 6:30 a.m. This means that each of us gets an average of seven hours of sleep a night or less in some cases. This is nowhere close to the recommended 8.5-9.5 hours we are supposed to get, which would require students to go to bed as early as 9:00 p.m.

Some might argue that it would be difficult to rearrange extracurricular activities that take place after school if school starts and ends at a later time. When asked about this, Principal Sean Hughes noted the potential problem of limited daylight after school for athletes. Similarly, acting Superintendent Wagner Marseille commented that other school districts might not be willing to change game times of sporting events, which could be necessary to accommodate a later high school start time. However, there would appear to be a variety of solutions for this concern. Core classes could be scheduled so that those who participate in sports have them earlier in the day. Practices could be scheduled before school at 8:00 a.m., allowing most students to still get eight hours of sleep. And of course, many indoor extracurricular activities could simply be held later in the day. However, whatever the concern, why would it matter more than our health, ability to learn, and general well being as students?

Other school districts have managed the transition, and performed better because of it. In fact, students who got eight or more hours of sleep performed better on state standardized tests and the ACT. They have also been shown to be less likely to engage in risky behavior. In a CDC survey in 2007, significantly less high school students (about 10 percent less for each category) used cigarettes, alcohol or marijuana, or felt sad or hopeless when they slept for more than eight hours as compared to less than eight hours. Students were also significantly less likely to report symptoms of depression, fall asleep in class, or drink caffeine. Perhaps most importantly, many parents said that their child was easier to live with after the change in school start time (92 percent of the parents in one school that changed its start time). If more sleep is shown to improve conditions for students in many categories, the inconvenience of rescheduling is a weak excuse for not bringing about change.

I suggest that LMSD switch the start time of its high schools with that of its elementary schools. While children of elementary school age need more sleep, they go to sleep earlier, so the change in time should not negatively affect them. In fact, this option might be preferred by families with young children who tend to wake up earlier. With this change, high schools would start school at 9:00 a.m. and end at 4:10 p.m., keeping the same school hours.

The school officials I spoke to indicated that one of the reasons for the current elementary school start time is concern about young children being on the street in the dark in the winter time. However, elementary school parents often accompany their children to the bus stop. Young children being outside at an earlier hour should not be an insurmountable obstacle.

Both school officials that I interviewed noted other issues with a later high school start time, but both seemed to be open to the possibility of starting school later. Hughes suggested that a double start time might be implemented, where people with after-school activities start school at 7:30 a.m., while all other students start school at 9:00 a.m. More buses could be bought to implement this schedule, but lack of finances and space would be issues with this plan. Acknowledging that research shows that students’ lack of sleep is a problem that needs to be dealt with, Hughes offered the following analogy: “If you know that brushing and flossing your teeth every day will prevent cavities, then why wouldn’t you do it?”

Another concern raised by Marseille is the potential significant financial impact in changing the start time. Yet, Marseille noted that after the Inter-School Council presented a speaker on this issue, many LMSD people surveyed thought that students’ lack of sleep is a problem. Marseille recognized that the evidence is very clear that students need more sleep than is being allotted and even had experience with a challenging early start time when he was a student. Marseille wants to have further discussions on changing school start time and to learn more about the successes and failures of other districts that have tried to do this. He offered that an interim step might be moving midterms and finals to later in the day (which may be implemented for finals this year). A decision to change school start time would be based on community discussion but would ultimately be decided by the school board.

With a 9:00 a.m. start time, getting eight or more hours of sleep would certainly be possible for many students. Students could be more productive during the day, less fatigued during classes, more successful on tests, and less likely to engage in risky behavior. If health is always the first priority, changing the start time of high schools should be a no-brainer.

#opinion