Those promising results led one of the state’s largest school districts, the Minneapolis Public Schools, to make similar changes.
“Teens do not wake up and function until 8 in the morning,” she said. She was familiar with what was then new research showing that adolescent sleep patterns were different from those of adults or younger children, with teens more likely to go to bed later at night and to get their most high-quality REM sleep later in the morning. Kyla Wahlstrom, a senior research fellow at the University of Minnesota’s College of Education, said she was skeptical when the Edina superintendent first reached out her in 1996 to ask if she’d study the effect of the new schedule. Researchers started documenting the benefits of later school start times in the mid-1990s when a small, affluent district in Edina, Minnesota, was among the first to experiment with shifting the start of the school day, moving the high school’s morning bell from 7:20 a.m. But what we object to is a one-size-fits-all unfunded mandate that discourages parental choice and doesn't take into account the diverse needs of various communities across the state.” ‘I was dumbfounded’
“We actually encourage districts to examine school start times to see if later times make sense for them. “We don’t oppose later school start times,” said Troy Flint, a spokesman for the California School Boards Association, which represents most of the state’s more than 900 school districts. That’s why California’s major education groups, including those representing teachers and school administrators, opposed the new law. Other communities grappled with scheduling sports practices, especially in the early darkness of winter, and districts have had to come up with extra funds to adjust bus routes or provide child care. In some districts that have moved start times, teens have struggled to find after-school jobs and were no longer available after school to watch younger siblings. But the debate over school start times asks districts to balance those benefits against economic and social consequences for parents, students and teachers whose lives may be disrupted by changes to their schedules.Ī later start to class can force parents to scramble for early morning child care before starting long commutes. Research shows that later school start times can increase the duration and quality of adolescent sleep, which has been linked to health benefits such as lower rates of depression and a reduced chance a teen will be involved in a car crash. If this turns out to be successful, with relatively few consequences, then I think it’s something that other states will likely consider.”īut, Temkin warned, “if this is implemented where it’s sort of just sprung on a community without taking the time to build in the necessary child care support and thinking through transportation issues, then I think we are much more likely to see negative consequences.”
“California, as one of the largest states in the country, can really define policy movements across the country.
“Everyone is going to be watching to see what the results are going to be,” said Deborah Temkin, senior director of the education program at Child Trends, a Washington-based research organization. If too many California districts struggle with the logistical ramifications of the mandated change, it might spur a backlash that could imperil the effort. “Right now all of these school districts are … debating this within their own communities and it’s a very painful process, but if we can get this done on a statewide level, then a lot of the objections go away.”Īdvocates hope that California’s new law, which over the next three years will bar most high schools from starting classes before 8:30 a.m., and most middle schools from starting before 8 a.m, will supercharge a public health campaign that has until now reached schools on a piecemeal basis, one district at a time.īut even as the new law has the potential to trigger sweeping policy changes across the country, it could also have the opposite effect. "This is huge," said Judith Owens, a neurology professor at Harvard Medical School and the lead author of a 2014 policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics that called for schools to let students get more rest by better aligning school start times with teens’ biological sleep rhythms.