TEXT 1 Why We Must - and Can - Restore Safe & Healthy School Hours Returning to later, healthier, safer, evidence-based school hours is a reform with the potential to improve the health, safety, and academic achievement of all students. What are we waiting for? Why is this a problem? Sleep experts have determined a shift in sleep cycles (circadian rhythms) beginning in adolescence that makes it more difficult for most adolescents to fall asleep as early as younger children or older adults. Typical sleep cycles begin around 11 p.m. for teenagers and continue through 8 a.m.. This means that an early wake-up call (5 or 6 a.m. to allow many teens to catch buses or commute to early-start schools) not only allows 6 or 7 hours of sleep per school night at most but also requires students to wake up in the middle of deep sleep. According to most sleep experts, most adolescents need about 9 hours of sleep per night. Today nearly 2/3 get under 8, and 2/5 get under 6 hours of sleep per night. Nearly 10% of U.S. high schools currently start before 7:30 a.m., 40% start before 8 a.m., and only about 15% start after 8:30 a.m. Over 20% of U.S. middle schools start class at 7:45 a.m. or earlier. Bus pick-ups start shortly after 5:30 a.m. in some districts, and teens must wake at 5 or 6 a.m. to get to school on time. Meanwhile, the school day ends in the early afternoon, sometimes even before 2 p.m. These schedules are out-of-sync with the sleep needs and patterns of middle and high school students, whose brains and bodies are still growing, and create a huge sleep debt every week of the school year. Early school hours PREVENT many students and young teachers from getting the 9 or so hours of sleep per night that most teenagers and young adults need. The health, safety, and equity benefits to starting middle and high school at times more in sync with the sleep needs and patterns of students are irrefutable. History and Status Quo A hundred years ago most schools (and places of business) started the day around 9 a.m. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, many schools shifted to earlier hours. Back then the importance of sleep and the nature of the adolescent sleep shift weren't understood, and the cost savings of running the fewest possible buses in three cycles was appealing. Even schools that didn't run buses often found it helpful to move start times earlier so that after-school schedules coordinated with those of nearby schools. As a result, many students today are asked to go to school on a "morning shift" schedule, one that requires that they be in class much earlier than many of their parents and grandparents might have been. WhenText 4 Starting school later can help adolescents get enough sleep and improve their health, academic performance, and quality of life. Not getting enough sleep is common among high school students and is associated with several health risks including being overweight, drinking alcohol, smoking tobacco, and using drugs, as well as poor academic performance. One of the reasons adolescents do not get enough sleep is early school start times. The American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended that middle and high schools start at 8:30 .m. or later to give students the opportunity to get the amount of sleep they need, but most American adolescents start school too early. According to the 2014 School Health Policies and Practices Study, [1.88 MB] 93% of high schools and 83% of middle schools in the U.S. started before 8:30 a.m. According to an earlier CDC study that analyzed US Department of Education data from the 2011-2012 school year: 42 states reported that most (75%-100%) public middle and high schools started before 8:30 a.m. The percentage of schools starting at 8:30 a.m. or later varied greatly by state. For example, o No schools in Hawaii, Mississippi, and Wyoming started after 8:30 a.m. Most schools in North Dakota (78%) and Alaska (76%) started after 8:30 a.m. Adolescents and Sleep The American Academy of Sleep Medicine [221 KB] recommends that teenagers aged 13 to 18 years should regularly sleep $ to 10 hours per day for good health. Adolescents who do not get enough sleep are more likely to Sleep Be overweight. would be - problem Not engage in daily physical activity. Suffer from symptoms of depression. Engage in unhealthy risk behaviors such as drinking, smoking tobacco, and using illicit drugs. . Perform poorly in school. During puberty, adolescents become sleepy later at night and need to sleep later in the morning as a result in shifts in biological rhythms. These biological changes are often combined with poor sleep habits (including irregular bedtimes and the presence of electronics in the bedroom). During the schooldad week, school start times are the main reason students wake up when they do.'The combination of late bedtimes and early school start times results in most adolescents not getting enough sleep. Everyone Can Play an Important Role Parents . Model and encourage habits that help promote good sleep: Setting a regular bedtime and rise time, including on weekends, is recommended for everyone-children, adolescents, and adults alike. Adolescents with parent-set bedtimes usually get more sleep than those whose parents do not set bedtimes. Dim lighting. Adolescents who are exposed to more light (such as room lighting or from electronics) in the evening are less likely to get enough sleep. Implement a "media curfew." Technology use (computers, video gaming, or mobile phones) may also contribute to late bedtimes. Parents should consider banning technology use after a certain time or removing these technologies from the bedroom. Consider contacting local school officials about later school start times. Some commonly mentioned barriers to keep in mind are potential increases in transportation costs and scheduling difficulties. Health care professionals Educate adolescent patients and their parents about the importance of adequate sleep and factors that contribute to insufficient sleep among adolescents. School officials Learn more about the research connecting sleep and school start times. Good sleep hygiene in combination with later school times will enable adolescents to be healthier and better academic achievers.TEXT 5 Teachers overwhelmingly oppose later high school start times in Montgomery By Julie Zauzmer and Dana Hedgpeth February 6, 2015 Montgomery County teachers overwhelmingly oppose all options for starting public high school later to give students more time to sleep, according to a new union survey. The results put the county's teachers in stark contrast with parents and health experts who have been lobbying for the change. Nearly half of the district's 12,000 teachers responded to the survey, and 63 percent said they favor not changing high school bell times, the only one of seven options the school board is considering that drew a majority. More than 50 percent said they were opposed to shifting start times 20 minutes later, and more than 60 percent opposed moving bell times 35 minutes later, according to the survey results. Tom Israel, executive director of the Montgomery County Education Association, said the study shows that teachers are "pretty overwhelmingly" against changing school start times. "What's striking is the message was the same from high school, middle school and elementary teachers," Israel said. "They were pretty strong in believing that it will not have any impact on academic achievement." He said teachers who were surveyed also raised concerns about lower-income families - with students who have to work after-school jobs or take care of younger siblings - and whether they'd be able to do those activities if the school day is shifted. Teachers also raised concerns, he said, about how late extracurricular activities would go if school start times were changed. Changing bell times has been a long-simmering issue in Montgomery, as parents and activists have advocated pushing the start of the high school day later to give teens more sleep. Citing studies on teenage sleep patterns and evidence from other school districts, parents have argued that letting students, especially high schoolers, sleep later would improve their academic performance and health. Superintendent Joshua P. Starr initially backed a proposal that would have changed the start times but later withdrew his support. The school board then asked school administrators to come up with low-cost options, and the board will consider those options at a hearing Tuesday. All of those are said to cost less than $10 million a year. Starr has recommended that the board consider only no-cost options, preferring one that would delay the start of all school days by 20 minutes. The concept has been gaining traction nationwide. Fairfax County, the largest jurisdiction in Virginia and one of the largest in the country, last year approved later bell times for next fall and has factored the change into next year's budget, which gained School Board approval this week. Parents in Montgomery have made impassioned pleas for later high school start times, sharing personal stories of teenagers who barely function in the pre-dawn darkness, fall asleep during early classes and fight chronic exhaustion.Advocates for changing the start times pushed back immediately when they learned of the results of the teacher survey. Michael Rubinstein, of the Montgomery chapter of the organization Start School Later, said the survey is a reflection that teachers just "don't want to do it." "They're saying, 'We don't like change,"" Rubinstein said. He added that the research is "very strong" that changing school start times improves academic achievement. He also cited other benefits to health, reducing accidents and closing the achievement gap. The survey of Montgomery teachers and other educational staff, which the union released ahead of the board meeting Tuesday, indicated that teachers do not agree that teens would benefit from later starts. Just 32 percent said that later start times would lead to better academic results for high school students. Sixty-five percent said that moving bell times would cause problems for students who participate in after-school activities. On the question of whether high school students' health would improve, 42 percent of teachers said yes, while 41 percent said it would make no difference. Rubinstein criticized the survey results, saying that teachers do not have any data to back up how many children in the area are working or taking care of siblings and how changing bell times would affect them. "The bottom line is, teachers don't want to do it, and they're making excuses," Rubinstein said. "They're concerned about what impact this has on them and not on the students." In written comments that accompanied the survey, educators cited reasons for their opposition, including "my home schedule," "I'd rather leave school at the earliest time possible to avoid commuting traffic" and "starting later just means kids will stay up later at night." Israel said that 5,800 teachers responded to the survey, many of them saying that a change could negatively affect education in the county. "Our view is this is a distraction from teaching and learning, " Israel said. "Teachers are saying they don't think this will improve academic achievement. As educators, our focus is on teaching and learning."public school times change, the whole community's rhythms change: "after" school stretches to four hours (and fills up with activities) or kids are unsupervised during the peak period for adolescent crime and risky behavior until the typical adult workday ends. Elementary schools start as late as 9:15 or 9:30, forcing working parents to send their young children to before-school care as well as after-care. Families whose children are in multiple school levels often have start and end times that span two hours in the morning and another two hours in the afternoon. The cost is being borne by students and their families. Health Impact Since the 1990s, sleep researchers and other health professionals have been telling us that these early school hours are harming children. It's not just the numbers of hours of sleep, but also the timing of sleep that is required for optimal health. (Sleep deprivation's impacts include: weight gain and eating . An essay that is disorders and increased risk of obesity, cardiovascular problems, and diabetes; reduced immunity; depression; anxiety; substance abuse; mood swings; behavior problems; suicidal ideation; and potential impacts on brain development. Safety Kids are out walking to the bus or driving to school in the dark for most of the school year in many communities. With few adults around, they are at risk. Drowsy driving increases - for our newest drivers. Teens released in the early afternoon (sometimes well before 2 p.m.!) have hours of unsupervised time until the typical adult work day ends. Sleep deprivation increases risk-taking behavior, substance abuse, and impedes judgment and decision-making ability. Equity and Achievement Gap Private schools rarely start earlier than 8 a.m. - and even those that start this early do so primarily to accommodate community life that centers on early-starting public schools. Parents with means can pull their children out of early-starting schools or they can choose to drive them to school or provide them with cars to give their children extra sleep in the mornings. They can drive provide late rides to school and absence notes on occasion to overcome the health, safety, and learning impact of chronic sleep deprivation. Families with fixed work schedules or lacking transportation aren't able to help their kids if they miss the bus and thus put their children at risk of tardiness or absence. As a result, children from disadvantaged backgrounds not only risk higher rates of tardiness and truancy, but also higher rates of dropping out of school - potentially increasing the achievement gap. When school start times are moved later, not only do rates of tardiness, truancy, absenteeism, and dropping-out decline, but improvements in academic achievement are nearly twice as high in students from economically disadvantaged homes.School Success Kids who are tired can't learn at their best, and sleep deprivation impairs learning, memory, and attention as much as it impairs health and overall well-being. Academic improvements have been shown, and overall school climate has been measurably improved when high schools have restored later start times. Teachers have commented extensively about the improvement in the classroom environment when students are more alert, less moody, and less likely to sleep in class. Successful Change Hundreds of schools around the United States have restored later start times, and many more never moved to extremely early hours in the first place. The schools that have found affordable, feasible ways to do so have been both large and small. Some have seen cost-savings by redesigning transportation systems more efficiently and applied those cost-savings to any expense incurred by re-scheduling. These districts can say they looked at the science of what's best for the students and made the change accordingly. They are seeing large and small benefits to physical and mental heath, learning, attendance, graduation rates, car crashes, and overall student well-being.TEXT # 2 School Districts Look at Changing School Start Times As committees in West Hartford and Simsbury begin evaluating the impacts of changing school start times, high school students in those districts said they think school should start later in the morning. Oct. 30, 2017, at 1:54 p.m By MIKAELA PORTER, Hartford Courant WEST HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - As committees in West Hartford and Simsbury begin evaluating the impacts of changing school start times, high school students in those districts said they think school should start later in the morning. And according to Trinity College neuroscience professor who has advocated later school start times at the high school level for over five years, the science behind adolescent sleep schedules solidifies the argument. "The science is overwhelming," Sarah Raskin said during a recent interview. "It's a question of finding a way to make the transition, because the change is clearly worth it." Raskin said that sleep cycles are controlled by hormones and that starting during puberty, those hormones shift. Adolescents' brains, Raskin said, "are just not capable of falling asleep before 11 o'clock at night." "So if you're not falling asleep until 11 o'clock at night and you're not ready to be awake until 8 in the morning, it becomes extremely difficult to be up at 5:30 or 6 at the bus stop and at school by 7 or 7:30 and ready to do calculus or physics or whatever else we expect them to do at 7:30 in the morning," Raskin said. "So what we're forcing our children to do is get into bed before they're ready, lay there wide awake staring at the ceiling until 11 or 11:30 at night and then we force them to get up right in the middle of one of their deepest sleep cycles." This, Raskin said, leads to sleep deprivation, which has been linked to increases in suicidal thoughts, increased risk-taking with alcohol and drug use, more tardiness, less academic performance in the classroom and standardized testing, increases in the number of motor vehicle accidents and sports injuries.Date: "It's a simple fix, it certainly requires a lot of effort when you first make the move," Raskin said. "I don't want to minimize the barriers and challenges involved, but once you've made that move you take care of so many vast health issues in our children - immune systems change, mental health changes, physical ability to respond behind the wheel and on-the field changes - all of them can be improved with this one change in the classroom." Maddy Hoang, a 15-year-old sophomore at Conard High School, said she tries to wake up each morning around 6:15 a.m. and heads to bed at around 11:30 p.m. She said she thinks the school's start time - 7:20 a.m. - is too early. Hoang's father John agrees - "7:30 seems a little early to start," he said. Jillian Gallagher, 15, a sophomore at Conard, said she typically goes to bed around 10 p.m., but has stayed up a few hours late on nights before a test or when she had field hockey matches or practice. In Simsbury, high school parent Anna Vdovenko said she is strongly in favor of later school start times. "Clearly these kids are exhausted,"Vdovenko said. "They have no life except school and activities, and they're so stressed out." Between homework, theater rehearsal and dance class, Vdovenko's daughter Anna-Maria often doesn't get to bed until at least 11:30 p.m. Her next day starts at 6 a.m. when she wakes up to get to school. "Every day I'm so tired," Anna-Maria said. "It'd be awesome to just get even one more hour of sleep." Anna Vdovenko said decision-makers need to consider what is best and healthiest for students. "It's important to take care of our teenagers," she said. "We need to fall into step with what's best for our kids." Prompted by a school board request at the end of the last school year, West Hartford's committee is charged to research what the impacts would be if the district were to change school start times. Leading the charge is the district's director of secondary education, Anne Mckernan, and a roughly 20- member committee including teachers, parents, the district's athletic director, music and arts directors, a representative from the teacher's union. "We're not making a decision on this, we're kind of acting as a research arm (for the school board)," Mckernan said.In Simsbury, Erin Murray the assistant superintendent for teaching and learning, said the high school leadership team focused on student stress and a large part of the conversation last year was on school start times. The 25- to 30-member Simsbury committee is composed of high school and middle school teachers, parents, students and school board members, Murray said. Both Murray and Mckernan said they hope to have final presentations made to their school boards next spring. Mckernan's group has had different researchers present their information, including former state Rep. Kevin Sullivan who attempted to roll out a statewide change in school start times in 2001. Raskin, who works in the department of psychology and neworscience, as well as Susan Rubman, the director of behavioral sleep medicine at the Hospital of Central Connecticut, have also presented their findings to the group. The West Hartford group is studying the impact of a later start time on transportation, athletics, academics, teachers, sleep schedules, town resources and activities, and hopes to learn from Wilton, which rolled out later school start times nearly 15 years ago. In 2002, after conducting reviews of adolescent sleep deprivation and high school student and teacher surveys, the League of Women Voters recommended that Wilton consider their study and take appropriate action. In spring 2003, parents and teachers were given the opportunity to take part in an "advisory vote" and list the reasons for their vote. That data showed that parents supported a change to later school start times at the middle and high schools two-to-one, and teachers opposed the change two-to-one. In fall 2003, Wilton switched start times at the middle and high school level from 7:35 a.m. to 8:15 a.m. Middle and high school students originally ended their day at 2:10 p.m., but switched to a 2:50 p.m. end time. Third grade through fifth grade students went from an 8:10 a.m. start time to 7:40 a.m. and instead of ending their day at 2:45 p.m. left school at 2:15 p.m. Wilton reported a "resounding success" but noted some unintended consequences like higher enrollment and having to add an additional school bus.TEXT # 3 5 Pros and Cons of Later School Start Times Many attempts have been made to switch school start times to later hours. High schools in the U.S. generally start at 8 a.m. if not earlier. Considering commute and morning preparations, students are rising long before dawn to spend six to eight hours of dealing with academic and other school activities. The National Sleep Foundation recommends at least nine hours of sleep for teens, but they get much less than that because they are required to wake up early on school days. Advantages of Later Start Times 1. Teenagers need at least 8.5 to 9.25 hours of sleep based on their biological clocks. Sleep deprivation affects physical and mental performance because the body's peak ability depends on Pool ts circadian rhythm. Several studies show that high school students are among the most sleep- Slapping deprived groups due to a combination of academic workload, sports, extra-curricular activities and starting their day too early. A study conducted jointly by Harvard and Oxford found recommended that school districts adjust schedules to match the biological wake-up times of each age group. At 16, this is would around 10 a.m.; at 18, 11 a.m. is the optimum wake-up time. 2. Schools with later start times showed significant improvements in school performance. move Could School districts that experimented with later start times found that students coped with academic Le goce workloads much better. A study that included 9,000 high school students conducted by the University of Minnesota found that grades, test scores and overall performance in core subjects advanced significantly when school start times were switched to later hours. 3. Later start times reduced tardiness, truancy and dropout rates. The same study cited above also found that starting the school day at a later time improved school attendance. When students slept adequately, they were less sluggish in the morning and more enthusiastic about going to school. Inactive 4. Later start times enhanced all-day focus, improved mood and boosted sports performance. Getting adequate sleep and adjusting school schedules to coincide with the natural sleep patterns of teens improved mood and attitude. Students were less likely to report depressive conditions. Physical performance in sports was boosted when students had enough sleep and sleep schedules coincided with biological sleep patterns. y move time of Spep could boost 5. Starting school later gave students time to eat a healthy breakfast. Given reasonable bell times, students can have the time to sit down for breakfast. This means having healthier breakfast choices than prepackaged foods developed for on- the-go eating. Avoiding Junk ov sugaryOV English The Disadvantages of Starting Late 1. School districts will face administrative and operational pressures. School scheduling is a delicate balance of resource allocation. Administrators deploy staggered school start times to allocate limited resources and to operate efficiently within their budgets. Adjusting bell times for high school students means that buses can't be rotated for different pick-up schedules. Overcrowded schools cannot stagger bell times to accommodate more classes to meet class size limits. 2. It becomes difficult to schedule sports practice and extra-curricular activities. It is difficult to squeeze academic schedules, sports events and extra-curricular activities into available daytime hours if schools started later. jouwon'$ 3. A late start time will disrupt parents' schedules. schoodue In households where adults work traditional hours, adjusting the first bell schedule to the recommended have 10 a.m. start time will disrupt the household's schedule. Students who have no bus service may have quo blom problems getting to and from school. 4. Starting later in the day will affect time available for after-school tutoring. Students who receive extra services such as one-on-one tutoring and other after-school support may find limited resources as tutors and volunteers may not have the ability to adjust their schedules. 5. Students and their families are already conditioned for early bell. After several years of being in the school system, family schedules have been set up to revolve around school schedules. Making a major switch to later start times may pose a challenge for working parents ( - True who would have to deal with additional costs of before and after-school care and transportation. Adjusting school schedules is a controversial issue because there are various considerations, all legitimate, that come into play. School districts that have experimented with adjusted schedules have found beneficial effects for students. However, making a massive change may be challenging in the face of limited school budgets and resources