Later start times for high schools

The following is excerpted from an opinion column by a pediatric sleep researcher in a regional newspaper.

Every fall, parents tell me the same story: a child who was a cheerful early riser at ten has become a teenager who cannot be dragged out of bed. They blame phones, or laziness. Those can play a part, but the bigger change is biological. During puberty, the body starts releasing melatonin, the hormone that signals sleepiness, later in the evening. For many teenagers, falling asleep before about 11 p.m. is genuinely difficult.

Sleep specialists recommend that teenagers get eight to ten hours of sleep a night. A student who falls asleep at 11 and catches a bus at 6:30 gets about seven at best. Repeat that five days a week and the debt adds up: slower reaction times, more trouble managing mood, and more risk on the road for teenagers who drive themselves to school. In 2014 the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that middle and high schools start no earlier than 8:30 a.m.

We would never schedule a teenager's first class at 3 a.m. and then lecture them about discipline. Yet for many adolescent bodies, a 7:15 start is not so different. Moving the first bell to 8:30 will not solve every problem, but it lines up the school day with the bodies we are asking to learn.

The following is excerpted from remarks by a school district's transportation director at a school board meeting.

Our district runs what we call a three-tier bus system. The same buses and drivers make three runs each morning: high schools first, then middle schools, then elementary schools. That is how a district our size gets twelve thousand students to school with ninety buses instead of two hundred.

If the high schools start at 8:30, something has to give. One option is to flip the tiers and start the elementary schools first, which means seven-year-olds waiting at bus stops before sunrise in December. The other is to run more routes at the same time, which means buying buses and hiring drivers we do not have. We already have eleven open driver positions. Our best estimate for the second option is about 1.4 million dollars a year.

I am not telling the board that a later start is a bad idea. I am telling you that it is not free, and the cost has to come from somewhere: from the budget, or from the youngest children.

The following is excerpted from a letter to a school board from a high school athletic director.

When a neighboring district moved its start time to 8:40, dismissal moved to 3:45. Practices that once ended at 5:30 now run until almost 7. In November that means the last hour of soccer practice happens under lights the school has to rent, or doesn't happen at all.

The bigger problem is away games. Our conference schools are spread across two counties. A 4:30 game forty miles away already pulls athletes out of last period; under a later schedule, they would miss last period two or three times a week. The students most affected would be the ones with the fullest schedules: athletes who also hold jobs or watch younger siblings.

I support healthy sleep. I also know that for many of our students, what happens after the final bell is the reason they come to school at all.

The following is excerpted from an editorial by a high school junior in her school newspaper.

Everyone assumes students want a later start, and I do. I'm writing this at 11:40 p.m. after a closing shift at the grocery store, and my alarm goes off at 5:50. But I also know what an 8:30 start would cost me. My manager schedules high schoolers from 3:30 to close. If school gets out at 3:45, I lose most of an hour every shift, about a fifth of my paycheck. And my little brother's elementary school lets out at 2:50; right now I'm the one who meets him at the bus.

I'm not saying the board should keep the early bell. I'm saying that when adults talk about 'students,' they picture one kind of student. A later start helps the student who can sleep in. It needs to help the student who works, too.