For Whom the School Bell Tolls - school schedules tailored to students' sleep needs

School Administrator, March, 1999 by Millicent Lawton

Minneapolis students complained they didn't have enough time to shift gears between the time they got out of school and the time they began their after-school jobs, according to Wahlstrom. But many liked the new schedule, saying they felt more alert and awake for the first two hours of school. They also said they liked having time at home in the morning to talk to their parents.

Parents, for their part, had mixed feelings about the impact of the changes on their child- care arrangements, Wahlstrom says. Elementary parents whose students start at 7:40 a.m. were pleased they didn't have to arrange for before-school child care. But educators at those schools that start as late as 9:40 a.m. report the students have been up for three hours watching television. And because teen-agers are getting out of school later than younger children, they are not around to baby-sit in the afternoon.

Since the bell change in Edina, students are getting about an hour more sleep than they did before, and parents and teachers are hailing the difference. Parents say the children are less crabby, moody and depressed.

Wahlstrom's research confirms such anecdotes about mood. Students in the districts similar to Edina but with earlier school start times reported more depressed feelings and risky behaviors.

Taking on such a complicated set of issues related to start times requires careful deliberations, Wahlstrom says. "This is a local decision, so there is not one solution that fits everyone. As a result, the only way a school district is going to have a good local decision is ... to sit down with the best information that they can get their hands on and have an open discussion ... and think a little bit outside the box."

Millicent Lawton is a free-lance education writer in Wellesley, Mass.

Sleep Research Sparks Eye-Opening Interest

Over the past 20 years, scientists have learned much about adolescent sleep needs and patterns. It is those findings that are leading researchers to call for schools to push school start times later in the morning-and causing some school districts to follow the advice.

What scientists have found is that teen-agers do not need less sleep than children and adults; they may actually need more. In addition, the research indicates puberty resets an adolescent's internal sleep clock to a sleep late/rise late schedule.

With the shift in the body's sleep schedule--as well as social pressures such as after-school jobs, sports participation and nighttime homework--teen-age bedtimes get pushed later than when the kids were younger. That wouldn't be so bad if it didn't run them straight into a temporal brick wall: school start times.

Sleep Cycles

To enforce an early school start on teen-agers who have the sleep late/rise late pattern means something's got to give--and most often it seems to be the students' daytime alertness. In one study, released in the Dec. 15, 1998, issue of the scholarly journal Sleep, researchers found significant daytime sleepiness in students making the transition from a junior high start of 8:25 a.m. to an opening high school bell 65 minutes earlier at 7:20 a.m.