Last year, the American Academy of Pediatrics encouraged schools to start later on in the day, due to numerous health benefits for students.
By Jessica Woo
Consideration for a later school start has become a national phenomenon and implementation is progressing slowly. However, there has yet to be sweeping change. Many districts are just beginning to consider later start times, and proposals have not been drafted. From the East Bruinwick Board of Education in New Jersey to the San Dieguito Unified High School District in California, school officials are weighing the cost-to-benefit ratio of such a policy. San Dieguito officials are even deliberating whether to allow students to choose their start times, from 7:30 am to 9:30 am. Furthermore, opponents argue that such policies will interfere with athletic schedules and drive up transportation costs for school buses as evident in Fairfax County, Virginia, where the school board decided to terminate its early school start due to an estimated increased transportation cost up to $7.5M.
With this in mind, we reached out to Patrick Cahalan, Board Member of the Pasadena Unified School District (PUSD), District 4, who indicated that tardiness in the district is an issue, and moving the start time back may help address it.
Mr. Cahalan answered when asked about PUSD considering changing school start time by saying:
This is a question best answered by a dedicated educational researcher, but my reading of the literature points to a slightly different nuance. The National Sleep Foundation (NSF) recommends 9-11 hours for a 6-13 year old and 8-10 hours for a 14-17 year old. Sufficient sleep is likely the root cause of the benefit when start times are moved; later start times are correlated with more sleep. The sleep itself is what leads to the educational outcomes.
Recommended sleep chart (Photo – National Sleep Foundation).
However, let’s put this in a real world context: If your 16-year old has to be in their first class at 7:30am and it takes them 2 hours to get up, dress, eat breakfast (good luck with that one), and get to school, they have to be up and moving by 5:30am and, if we use the NSF’s recommendations, IN BED ASLEEP at no later than 9:30pm (for 8 hours of sleep; 7:30pm if they want 10 hours of sleep).
Mr. Cahalan continued:
It would be a disservice to our students if changing the start time for the school day simply resulted in the majority of them waking up at the same time they do now, arriving at the school facility at the same time they do now, and simply waiting around for the doors to open. That’s moving the start time, without addressing the underlying issue. In addition, altering the start time at the middle or high school level independently of the elementary schools may also enable those students who do have later bedtimes to benefit from a later start time.
He went on to speak about Pasadena’s schools:
I don’t believe there is currently a significant movement in the PUSD community to alter the school start times. Prior to my election to the Board of Education, the topic came up in the District Advisory Council meetings once or twice as part of a larger conversation. Recent conversations have been more concerned with the start date than the start time.
Asked about his own family, he said:
I have two children in the district, a newly minted middle school student, just entering into sixth grade, and a fourth grade student. We have never had much of a problem in our own house getting up and getting to school on time.
When my eldest was in third grade he would voluntarily wake up prior to the alarm bell, now that he’s getting closer to the teenage years he’s getting up a little slower in the morning. I’m sure that he would vote for a later start time, if given the choice…but I suspect he would vote for a later start time under the impression that he could have a later bedtime.
Mr. Cahalan concluded that “given the educational research, the district should look into the possibilities, certainly. There may be a possibility here for creative thinking, or there may be a middle ground”.
> Read more: Are Schools Killing Summer?
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