Finally. High Schools Starting Later to Help Sleepy Teens:
Most high schools begin their day around 7:30 a.m., which leaves many teenagers nodding off in the morning. In fact, at least 20 percent of high school students fall asleep in class on a typical day. The problem: Teenagers need a lot of sleep — about nine hours each night, experts say. And most of them aren’t getting enough.To help sleepy teens, some school districts have tried delaying the opening of the high school day. Educational researcher Kyla Wahlstrom, from the University of Minnesota, has been following districts that changed their start times, tracking the effect on schools and students. The Minneapolis school district, for example, changed its start time from 7:20 to 8:40 a.m., giving its 12,000 high schoolers an extra hour and twenty minutes each morning. Wahlstrom says the students have benefited from the change.
“Students reported less depression when there was a later starting time,” she says. “And teachers reported that students were more alert and ready for learning. Parents reported that their children were easier to live with because their emotions were more regulated.”
Additionally, Wahlstrom found a decrease in the number of students who were dropping out of school or moving from school to school.
According to the National Sleep Foundation, more than 80 school districts around the country have now made the change to start their high schools later. These districts range from large, urban school districts, such as Minneapolis and Denver, to suburban districts, such as Jessamine County in central Kentucky.
Really, why, if a typical job starts at 9:00 AM, would you have teenagers start school at 7:30 AM?