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School bell or alarm clock

Posted 10/4/19

Should high school classes start later in the day?

It's a question that school boards have been pondering for a long time. If you ask most high school students, they might eagerly jump at the …

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School bell or alarm clock

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Should high school classes start later in the day?

It's a question that school boards have been pondering for a long time. If you ask most high school students, they might eagerly jump at the chance to sleep in longer, but there may be some scientific evidence that suggests teenagers are on a different internal clock than the elementary students they were just a few short years before.

The New York State School Boards Association recently released the findings of a new poll which found that nearly six in 10 school board members think that the instructional day in their districts should begin later in order to accommodate teenagers' natural sleep cycles. The poll found that 59 percent of board members (out of a random sampling of 378) would be in favor of pushing back the start of the high school instructional day.

Compare that with 28.5 percent said they were not in favor of it and 12.5 percent who were not sure.

The idea of starting high school later in the day is already practiced in some districts throughout New York State. More than half of those who participated in the NYSSBA poll said that sleep deprivation among high school students in their district poses a significant problem facing effective education. “A growing body of research has determined that there is a shift in sleep patterns starting in adolescence which causes most teenagers to naturally fall asleep around 11 p.m. or later, and that pushing the start of school back would still allow them to get between 8.5 and 9.5 hours of sleep each night,” read a NYSSBA statement Monticello School board president Lori Orestano-James said she thought high schoolers starting later might be a good idea, but she recognized the logistical problems it creates if our districts started later and neighboring districts did not.

This is especially true when it comes to interscholastic sporting events, the majority of which are scheduled for mid-afternoon or early evening. Moving the start of school up later in the day would conflict with those events.

If students-athletes in a district with later start times were going to neighboring district with regular schedules, those students would miss out on valuable class time and thus negate the reason for pushing the schedule back in the first place.

“There's issues that are out of local control that affect our ability to make decisions that are in the best interests of our children,” Orestano-James said. While there's a growing body of scientific research to suggest starting high school later in the day would be

beneficial for students, it would only work if it was a state-wide decision to do so. In the meantime, it's important to teach our kids how good nutrition and putting down electronic devices at a certain time can increase the quality of our sleep.

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