Montgomery County, Maryland is one of the school districts that just changed its school start times to meet the new recommendations. They found that 42 U.S. states reported that 75 to 100 percent of the public schools in their respective states began before 8:30 a.m., with the average start time being 8:03 a.m.
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Most American adolescents are getting up too early.
“Among the possible public health interventions for increasing sufficient sleep among adolescents, delaying school start times has the potential for the greatest population impact by changing the environmental context for students in entire school districts”, the researchers wrote in the August. 7 issue of the CDC journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Most Georgia schools start at 8:09 a.m.
Louisiana had the earliest average school start time (7:40 a.m.), while Alaska had the most delayed (8:33 a.m.), according to the report.
“Getting enough sleep is important for students’ health, safety and academic performance”, said CDC epidemiologist Anne Wheaten. In Hawaii, Mississippi and Wyoming, there were no schools starting at 8:30 a.m. or later, but in Alaska and North Dakota, more than 75 percent of schools started at 8:30 a.m. or later, the report said.
CDC and Department of Education researchers reviewed data from the 2011-2012 Schools and Staffing Survey of almost 40,000 public school students to come up with the school start-time results. The group says adolescents who do not get enough sleep are more likely to be overweight, suffer from depression, engage in unhealthy risky behaviors like smoking and drinking and they tend to perform poorly in school.
“It makes absolutely no sense”, said physician M. Safwan Badr, a past president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
There are concerns about school bus routes, traffic, parents’ schedules, and fitting in after-school activities.
Allowing high schoolers to sleep in could mean sending elementary kids to school in the dark during the winter, as they would have to take the early schedule.
“Your kids are not lazy-bones”, he said. Over time, people who don’t get enough sleep are more likely to develop heart disease and type 2 diabetes, Owens said.
Parents who are concerned about their teens’ sleep patterns can help by promoting good sleep hygiene, James said.
Other steps that can improve sleep in teens include setting regular bedtimes and waking times (even on weekends), and removing technologies, such as computers, video games and mobile phones, from teens’ bedrooms.
When asked about their day, kids remember many things but first period oftentimes remains a mystery precisely because they are too sleepy to pay attention in class. Much like those moments before falling asleep, when the sleepiness takes over and you start drifting off, early mornings are quite hard to remember because the body is doing its best to keep up with the stress of being up before getting enough rest.
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The percentage of schools with start times of 8:30 a.m. or later varied greatly by state.
