Wake-up call? Feds complain schools starting classes too early in morn

Morning school bells are going off too early in too many U.S. public schools, raising the risks for poor academic performances and health problems, the government said Thursday.

Classes that start at 8:30 a.m. or later give teenagers a better chance to get the recommended 8½ hours to 9½ hours of sleep on school nights, said the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But less than one in five schools start at 8:30 a.m. or later, the agency said, citing data from the 2011-12 Schools and Staffing Survey of nearly 40,000 public middle, high and combined schools.

The average start time nationally was 8:03 a.m.

Louisiana had the earliest average start time of 7:40 a.m., and Alaska had the latest, barely within the recommendations at 8:33 a.m., the CDC said.

“Getting enough sleep is important for students’ health, safety and academic performance,” said CDC epidemiologist Anne Wheaten. Drinking alcohol, being overweight, smoking tobacco and using drugs, as well as poor academic performance, are all associated with insufficient sleep, the CDC said.

But changing school times has a ripple effect on busing, after-school child care and sports programs, Brian Stack, principal of the Sanborn Regional High School in Kingston, New Hampshire, wrote in a 2014 online article.

“Our start time is 7:20 a.m.,” he wrote. This early time permits high school athletes the time to travel as long as two hours to compete with other schools.

If classes started later, “we would need the other high schools in our state to make the same concessions; otherwise, our athletes would be missing large amounts of class time to travel to games each day,” Mr. Stack wrote.

Moreover, with buses doing multiple runs for multiple grade levels and high school students doing child care for younger siblings or working after school, districts must wrestle with several logistical issues “before making such a change in their systems,” he noted.

Changing school start times can easily spark controversy with parents too.

In Chicago, where high schools are now set to start at 9 a.m. instead of 8 a.m., as part of a cost-saving move, some students and families are protesting that there won’t be time for after-school sports and activities, NBC Chicago Channel 5 reported Wednesday.

However, the American Academy of Pediatrics in September recommended that schools start at 8:30 a.m. or later, noting that teens’ sleep-wake cycles shift by up to two hours in puberty and can leave many youths physically unable to fall asleep before 11 p.m.

“Chronic sleep loss in children and adolescents is one of the most common — and easily fixable — public health issues in the U.S. today,” said Dr. Judith Owens, lead author of the American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement, “School Start Times for Adolescents.”

StartSchoolLater.net, a nonprofit that advocates for later morning bells, keeps track of positive outcomes: A North Carolina middle school reported better math and reading scores after its start time was set back 30 minutes, to after 8 a.m. In Wyoming, a high school said the number of car crashes by teen drivers fell by 70 percent when its start time was moved to 8:55 a.m., the nonprofit said.