Sleepy teens and school start times: District plans to start school later

Recent studies have shown that as few as 15% of teens are getting enough sleep at night, which is why the Norwood Public Schools have been discussing changing school start times for the fall of 2022. 

In the winter of 2017, members of the Norwood community contacted Superintendent Jim Hayden about possibly changing school start times. The school committee decided to start a sub-committee devoted to researching this topic more, and in the fall of 2018, they voted to launch a task force. Since then, the Task Force has been researching this topic in-depth and collecting feedback from everyone who may be affected. 

Hugh Galligan, principal of NHS, says that these changes will go into effect “in the fall of 2022” and he said that “the school committee felt like there was too much uncertainty right now to make that change for next fall, and [they] wanted to give people plenty of time to plan.”

Dr. Galligan also talked about the “strong research suggesting that older students’… sleep cycles change so that naturally they are not ready to go to sleep until much later than they used to be”. He says these sleep times can range from, “11 pm and 1 am sometimes, and that they still need 8 to 9 hours of quality sleep.” 

“The primary benefit is for students and that’s why this change is [being] made,” Galligan said. “The reason this shift is happening is because it has been medically and scientifically proven to be beneficial for our students.” 

Freshman, Kayla Cahill, who would be a junior when these changes go into effect, said that she likes the start times as they are now. 

“I would get more sleep, but I also like having time after school to do sports and hang out with friends,” she said 

Getting out of school later is an obstacle that the committee has had to think a lot about. Starting school earlier means getting out later, and for Norwood High, that means school ending at around 3 pm.  

Galligan said that “making this work from a budget standpoint of trying to find the right number of busses, the transportation needs, the budget needs, those were the challenges.” 

In order to meet those budget and accommodation needs, the task force voted to start elementary schools earlier, and middle and high school later. 

John Santos, who is a seventh-grade student at Coakley Middle School, will be a freshman when these changes go into effect. He said that he’s “used to waking up at 6 am and now he can wake up at 7:30 am.” 

Santos also said that he feels like he “will very much get more sleep” and is enthusiastic about starting school later.