Legislating start time of school day could solve sleep problems

Monday, July 13, 1998

Legislating start time of school day could solve sleep
problems

EDUCATION: Worries that teens are deprived of rest prompt bill
to lawmakers

By Lawrence Ferchaw

Daily Bruin Staff

Jonathan Yu, 14, gets an average of five to six hours of sleep
each night, and says he feels fine. But, according to researchers,
he shouldn’t.

Like most high school students, Jonathan is not getting enough
sleep each night, a fact the National Sleep Foundation (NSF) and
some members of Congress find alarming.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., is trying to give students more time
to sleep by introducing legislation to push back the start time of
high schools.

Her "Z’s to A’s" plan would ask high schools to start after 9:00
a.m. and offer federal grants to make the transition possible. The
legislation would not shorten the length of the school day but
would have classes end later in the day.

"It’s time for high schools to synchronize their clocks with
their students’ body clocks so that teens are in school during
their most alert hours," Lofgren said in a statement.

Though the legislation would not affect college students,
scientific studies cited by Lofgren show that adolescents and late
teens need more sleep than adults. The change in hormones that
accompanies puberty also makes teens more alert at night and sleepy
in the morning.

According to researchers, these sleep patterns become a problem
when high schools start as early as 7:30 a.m. In the Los Angeles
Unified School District (LAUSD), high schools start anywhere
between 7:20 a.m. and 8:00 a.m.

"Early school start times for adolescents are frequently
associated with significant sleep deprivation, which can lead to
academic, behavioral and psychological problems," said Dr. Mary
Carskadon, NSF Pediatric Council chair, in a statement.

Though Lofgren does not expect her legislation to pass, she said
it "provides an opportunity to highlight the issue and gives a
platform for the scientists."

The proposal, however, is not without critics.

"I don’t think (I would have liked a 9:00 a.m. start) because of
how late I’d get out," said Jill Waddell, a third-year applied
mathematics student.

Educators have concerns of their own about legislating the start
time for schools.

"By making a ‘one size fits all’ legislation we could end up
with another set of problems," said Socorro Serrano, communications
officer for the LAUSD.

These problems include parents who work in the morning not being
sure their teens get to school and the possibility of school ending
after dark.

Rather than legislation, she said that schools could put their
physical education and arts classes in the morning and the academic
classes in the afternoon to accommodate students’ sleep and
learning patterns.

While high school students cannot choose what time they start
school, most college students have more freedom.

"I don’t think I would ever go to class (at 8 a.m.)," said Alida
Schlegel, a third-year physiological sciences student.

Schlegel said she gets about six hours of sleep each night and
suffers from sleep deprivation during the school year.

"I walk about like a zombie. I look like I’m in a daze,"
Schlegel said.

Schlegel, like other students, said she was most productive in
the evening and suggested that UCLA should offer classes later at
night.

Jeff Cabusao, a second-year graduate student in Asian American
studies, also stays away from early morning classes and sleeps from
about 3 a.m. to 8 a.m.

"Around 8 to 9 o’clock is when I’m most productive," Cabusao
said.

Getting five to six hours of sleep each night means that Cabusao
is accumulating a sleep debt – the total of all missed sleep. The
only way to reduce this debt is to sleep in excess of the required
amount.

The body’s natural tendency to want to fall asleep as the sleep
debt grows can create a dangerous situation depending upon where
the person is, according to the NSF. Drivers and workers who use
dangerous equipment are at risk when deprived of sleep.

While its primary aim is sleep, the legislation also targets the
problem of juvenile crime – which peaks between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m.
The later start time would not let teens out of school until later
in the afternoon, when more parents would be home to supervise
them.

Serrano sees keeping all students in school later as
problematic. Instead, she pointed out the success of the LAUSD in
creating after school programs to encourage students to stay on
campus later.

"Our dropout and truancy rate has been cut dramatically with
that approach," Serrano said.

With reports by Emi Kojima, Daily Bruin Senior Staff.