Students Need More Sleep

Here at Proctor Jr/Sr High School, we have to arrive by 7:45. Most of the time, kids don’t wake up until 7:15 and would love to sleep in even later.

 School start times should be changed. According to a May 29, 2023 article “How would later school Start Times Affect Sleep?” from the Sleep Foundation, “Around the beginning of puberty, most adolescents experience later sleep onset and wake times, also called “phase delay”. This phase delay can shift the body’s internal clock by up to two hours. As a result, the average teenager cannot fall asleep until 11:00 p.m. and would best wake up at 8:00 a.m. or even later.”

For this reason, our school start times should be changed from 7:45 to 8:30 or later.

Not one but two academies (the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the American Academy of Pediatrics) have said that an 8:30 start time is more recommended for middle and high school.

The risks of earlier start times are a higher risk of athletic injuries, an increase in depressive symptoms, and an increased risk of motor vehicle accidents. (According to the Sleep Foundation).

Later start times improve attendance, decrease tardiness, improve student grades, reduce students' falling asleep, and decrease adolescent motor crashes (also according to the Sleep Foundation).

“Adolescent health is significantly improved by having later start times,” Kyla Wahlstrom PhD, an educational policy researcher at the University of Minnesota, who has been studying start times since the 1990s, said noting reductions in substance use, suicide, and depression. “This isn’t a silver bullet to improve test scores. It’s a public health policy,” she said in an August 22, 2024 article in the American Psychological Association.

Students whose schools started between 8 a.m. and 8:29 a.m., and those in schools starting between 8:30 a.m. and 8:59 a.m. had longer sleep duration, less negative mood, and better developmental outcomes including socioemotional health, cognitive development, behavioral health, and physical health (according to the American Psychological Association). 

I urge the GRCSU School Board to follow the scientists’ advice and change the school's start time.