Anyone who has a teenager, or been one, knows the difficult of getting them out of bed in the morning and off to school.
Scientists have said for years there’s a scientific basis for teens’ inability to get up bright and early. Now one state legislator wants public schools to bow to scientific consensus and push back the start of the school day.
Senate Bill 328, introduced Monday by State Sen. Anthony Portantino, D-La Cañada, would “require the school day for middle schools and high schools to begin no earlier than 8:30 a.m.”
“In education reform, there’s arguments raging on all sides, except for this one,” Portantino said. “8:30 is the earliest a high schooler or middle schooler should start school.”
Portantino, whose district stretches from Burbank in the west to Upland in the east, cites the American Academy of Pediatrics, which in 2014 said that teens who don’t get enough sleep “often suffer physical and mental health problems, an increased risk of automobile accidents and a decline in academic performance.”
“Adolescents who get enough sleep have a reduced risk of being overweight or suffering depression, are less likely to be involved in automobile accidents, and have better grades, higher standardized test scores and an overall better quality of life,” the academy’s statement reads in part. “Studies have shown that delaying early school start times is one key factor that can help adolescents get the sleep they need to grow and learn.”
It’s not just a matter of teens staying up late online, according to Irina Keller, adjunct professor of Child and Adolescent Development at San Jose State University, and a state leader for Start School Later, a “coalition of health professionals, sleep scientists, educators, parents, students and other concerned citizens” seeking to push back school start times.
“It’s not because of bad habits, and it’s not because of discipline,” she said. “There is also a physiological shift in their biological clock.”
The influx of hormones and other changes during puberty change teens’ circadian, or internal body, clock, she said.
“Unless you can completely isolate from the real natural light and provide artificial lighting, you cannot change their circadian clocks to earlier,” Keller said. “They have to wake up later and go to sleep later.”
Currently, students are essentially walking around jet-lagged, getting up earlier than their brains want to and not getting as much sleep as they need.
“You can forcefully wake them up, but you cannot forcefully make them fall asleep,” Keller said. “Even though they’re tired, and need their sleep, they have trouble falling asleep because their biological clock is not there yet.”
And that means the earliest classes of the day might as well not happen.
“The first hours in school, they cannot learn,” Keller said. “It’s a waste of everybody’s time, energy, money.”
There are other potential benefits as well: Later school start times have been linked to higher attendance rates, according to Portantino. Because schools are paid based on the number of students who show up each day, higher attendance is directly linked to finances. For example, Los Angeles Unified would receive an additional $40 million in annual funding if attendance went up by 1 percent.
Portantino believes the change needs to be adopted statewide. School district schedules are more or less synchronized across the state because of after-school sports schedules and similar activities.
“I’m normally a local control guy,” he said. “But in this incidence, because of all the extracurricular activities are linked to this, you have to do this on a state level.”
But while the science may be clear, changing school start times also means changing the schedules for many of the parents of the more than 6 million California public school students.
“The controversy is not between science and science but between science and a resistance to change,” Keller said.
Portantino acknowledges that challenge but believes it can be overcome.
“There will be an inconvenience to the family routine as we’ve known it for the past 50 years,” Portantino said. “The implementation needs to have deference and respect to that problem.”
Portantino, who served six years in the state Assembly before being elected to the Senate this past November, is optimistic about SB 328’s chances.
“I think if the people look at the science and the data, most parents want what’s in the best interests of their kids,” he said. “The fact that we’re going to make the benefit to the kids front and center, and have the data to back it up, I think the odds of getting it to the governor’s desk are good.”
Keller believes it’s a matter of when, not if, school start times will change
“I do believe at some point, people will look back and say, ‘Gosh, what did we do to our teenagers, waking them up so early?’” she said. “There’s always a gap between science and policy.”
