Middle and high schools would start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. under bill sent to governor
ICONIC_school bus, bussing, education,
(John R. McCutchen / UT San Diego/Zuma Press)
By Kristen Taketa
Eileen Gaspar estimates that her high school daughter gets four to five hours of sleep a night.
Her daughter goes to Olympian High in Chula Vista, where school starts at 7:30 a.m., so she's out the door each morning by 6:45 a.m. But she has cheerleading practice every evening until about 7 p.m., and once she gets home, she has to shower, eat dinner then stay up late doing homework.
"Kids stay up so late now and doing homework, and then they have to wake up early to go to school," Gaspar said. "They don't get that eight-hour rest that they really need."
Lawmakers recently passed a bill that would force schools to start later, which some hope will address this lack-of-sleep problem that Gaspar sees in her daughter.
State legislators passed a bill at the end of August that would require California public middle and high schools, including charter schools, to start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. by 2021. Only rural school districts would be exempt from the rule.
The Senate Bill 328, which was introduced last year but failed in a state Assembly vote last September, now awaits approval or a veto by Gov. Jerry Brown.
"It is fundamental to put the well-being of our students first and I am glad that this important measure is moving forward," state Senator Anthony Portantino, D-La Cañada Flintridge, who authored the bill, said in a statement. "The science and results are clear, our teens are healthier and perform better when school starts later."
The bill passed in the state Senate by a 23-14 vote, then in the Assembly by a 41-34 vote.
No state currently mandates school start times, according to the Education Commission of the States. A few states require certain agencies to study how school start times affect student health, safety and achievement, according to the Commission.
Studies have found that getting adequate sleep leads to better student health, attendance and performance in school, Pennsylvania State University biobehavioral health professor Orfeu Buxton said.
But young people are not getting enough of it. Buxton said teenagers between 13 and 18 years old should get at least 8-10 hours of sleep a day, yet the average adolescent got less than 8 hours of sleep on school nights, according to a 2006 National Sleep Foundation poll. About 45 percent of adolescents do not get enough sleep on school nights, according to the poll.
School start times may have something to do with it, researchers have found. For example, Buxton wrote in a December study that teens with school start times between 7 and 7:20 a.m. got 46 fewer minutes of bed time on average than teens who started at 8:30 a.m. or later.
Later start times are helpful for adolescents because, once they enter puberty, adolescents are biologically conditioned to sleep at later hours than younger children, Buxton said. On top of that, electronic devices such as smartphones and TVs have delayed bedtimes even more for youth, he added.
But the start times bill has raised concerns because it represents an extension of state control over something that has long been decided by local school boards, according to teachers union and school district officials.
"We are not opposed to later start times. We're opposed to instituting a one-size-fits-all approach," said Ed Sibby, spokesman for the California Teachers Association, which represents about 325,000 teachers, counselors, social workers, school librarians and other school employees.
Officials also worry that a mandated start time would disrupt bus and parent drop-off schedules.
"We know for a fact that many of our parents don't have the ability to simply inform their employers that they're going to start work an hour later," California School Boards Association legislative advocate Nancy Chaires Espinoza said.
Sibby said school start times should be decided locally, and only after discerning whether it would be best for its population of students and after consulting with parents and other stakeholders.
In Grossmont Union High School District, for example, bell schedules can only be changed if two-thirds of the teachers in a school vote for that change, Grossmont Assistant Superintendent Theresa Kemper said.
"We've never had a change imposed on us. It's always been from the local," Kemper said.
If a Grossmont school wanted to change the bell schedule, its staff would also have to investigate how the change would affect food services and busing, Kemper said.
School districts, such as Grossmont, typically have staggered start times districtwide so that buses have time to get all their students to class on time. A universal start time could be particularly difficult for high school districts like Grossmont, which would likely have to acquire several more buses in order to transport students all at the same time.
"It would be really difficult for every school to have the same start time," Kemper said.
Other schools, however, have already begun to adopt later start times in the name of student health.
This spring, the San Diego Unified School Board decided to switch its high schools to an 8:30 a.m. start time by 2020. Some schools, including Kearny High and High Tech High charter school, start later than 8:30 a.m. every day of the week.
"To me, this is more like vaccinations — it's a public health issue," San Diego Unified School Board Trustee John Lee Evans said.
It's also common for schools to have a late start on just one day of the week. La Jolla High is one school that has started phasing in a later start time on Tuesdays as a kind of trial period. Last month, the school began starting at 8:50 a.m. on Tuesdays, instead of its normal 7:25 a.m. start.
"The La Jolla community, I think like many others in San Diego Unified, had been looking at late start times for a number of years," La Jolla High Principal Chuck Podhorsky said. "We're starting slowly in an effort to make sure that we're getting it right and engaging stakeholders."
Like many other schools that have late starts once a week, La Jolla High uses its extra time on Tuesday mornings to train teachers on different topics, Podhorsky said.
"It's a win-win. It benefits students through what we see in the research, but it also gives us a little more time so that we can do professional development with the teachers," Podhorsky said.
Kristen Taketa
Email: kristen.taketa@sduniontribune.com
Twitter: @Kristen_Taketa
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