By Justin Hsieh
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law a bill that will require almost all public high schools and middle schools in the state to push back their start times over the next three years. The bill, which was signed earlier this month and was designed to help students get more sleep, has made California the first state to mandate such action from its schools, and has sparked controversy among educators across the state.
Senate Bill (SB) 328 requires public high schools to start no earlier than 8:30 a.m., and public middle schools no earlier than 8 a.m. The bill applies to all public schools except those in rural districts, and requires schools to implement these later start times by the 2022-2023 school year or at the expiration of whatever contract with their employees is in force on Jan. 1, 2020.
Proponents of SB 328 say that later start times will improve students’ attendance, physical and mental health, academic performance and driving safety by allowing them to get more sleep. The bill’s supporters cite research by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that says starting school after 8:30 a.m. will better meet the biological sleep needs of adolescent students.
“Physiologically, with middle and high school kids, their circadian rhythm changes so asking them to go to bed at 10 every night is very difficult,” said FVHS School Nurse Marci McLean-Crawford (Nurse Marci). “Your body is not ready to shut off until at least 10 or 11 at night. So I think from that perspective, it gives you a little more time to sleep in the morning, which is what your body needs, and I think it’s a good idea. Now, whether all of the students understand that and take advantage of that is a completely different story.”
According to the CDC, only one in four high school students in the country get adequate sleep (eight or more hours a night). The AAP has deemed insufficient sleep among adolescents “a public health issue,” and Nurse Marci says that sleep deprivation is a significant problem at FVHS, especially among academically high-achieving students. Later start times, proponents assert, would help to solve this problem.
But not everyone agrees with this view of SB 328 and its mandated later start times. The bill has many critics among legislators and educators who dispute its effectiveness, point out potential negative side effects and raise concerns about pushing school end times 30 minutes later into the afternoon.
“I think this bill is micromanaging communities that don’t need to be micromanaged,” said FVHS math teacher and basketball coach Marianne Karp. “If you tell a teenager they don’t have to be at school until 8:30, they’re going to stay up until 3:30 in the morning. Secondly, if a parent goes to work at 8, they’re going to drop their kid off at 7:30—so they’re not getting any more sleep. If a student is in sports, that’s going to be highly affected and interfere with their academics [if they have to leave class early for competitions]. And lastly, if a senior wants to have a job, it’s going to be really difficult for them to get their education in during the morning hours and then go have a job.”
FVHS students are divided in their opinions of the bill. Some say that current 8 a.m. start times are fine, and that changes in end times could negatively affect them.
“I don’t think it will be that effective because a lot of students are used to the old times, and a change of thirty minutes in start time wouldn’t affect the student population that much,” said junior Samson Le. “I feel that if school got out thirty minutes later, there would be less time for homework and we would have to sleep later, which would be detrimental to students’ health. It’s nice to know that the government understands students’ situations, but it is also unnecessary.”
Other students believe that SB 328’s later start times will give them a welcome opportunity to get more sleep.
“With later start times I’d get more sleep, because I always end up going to bed late because of homework and sports,” said freshman Noah Korhonen. “Waking up later would be awesome.”
Although SB 328 gives schools until the 2022-2023 school year to implement their later start times, Principal Morgan Smith says that FVHS may do so earlier.
“I suspect that in our team meeting this spring, more than likely we’ll try to jump ahead of the 2022 deadline,” said Smith. “I think the district, because we have the two year [bell schedule] cycle, as a whole will do that. I don’t think any site will go ‘you know what, let’s continue to meet at 8, and let’s try to change it for 2022 last minute.’”
Smith says that in addition to FVHS staff, students and parents will also be involved in the planning process for the new schedule.
“What we’ll most likely do is inform families that we’re starting the bell schedule process again, and we’ll do surveys,” said Smith. “So we’ll send out questions to our students, to our parents, and ask them things like would you prefer a break, would you prefer a homeroom, would you prefer more instructional time—so we gather input from all stakeholders, and they’ll be informed of what we’re doing and that we’re looking at the process and investigating new bell schedules.”
Although Smith acknowledges that there are valid concerns about later school end times, he also points out that the FVHS bell schedule used to end around 2:50, and moved to an earlier 2:25 end time for the 2019-2020 school year. If FVHS moved all of its times 30 minutes later to meet the requirements of SB 328, the sixth period end time would be very similar to that of the 2017-2018 school year. With that in mind, Smith is confident that the community will be able to adapt to the impending schedule changes.
“We will not step into this new schedule blindly,” said Smith. “I think we’re going to consider all factors; how our surrounding schools start, what the impact of a later start will mean for families, from parking to release times—we will consider all factors, and parallel to the late start we will be looking at things like homework and stress and mental health and all the things that we need to be doing and being diligent about.”
For information about managing sleep schedules to accommodate for school start times, click here.
This article was updated on September 22, 2020 to include a link to an article by SleepAdvisor on managing sleep schedules.
