The University of Pittsburgh’s Center of Sleep and Circadian Science is calling on the state to require high schools to start class later in the day. At a panel discussion this week, medical experts joined a local school administrator to tout the benefits of letting teens sleep in.
“This is not an education issue, it’s a health issue,” said Joanna Fong-Isariyawongse, a UPMC neurologist and Pitt professor of neurology. She noted a “tight correlation between sleep deprivation and things like suicide and risky driving.”
Experts argue that waking teens up before their bodies are ready can lead to more chronic sleep deprivation, which can precipitate learning challenges as well as physical and mental health issues.
“It's really an inflection point for the onset of other mental health disorders, which can really set the trajectories for mental health into adulthood,” said Wendy Troxel, senior behavioral and social scientist at the RAND corporation.
Research also shows that student athletes who suffer from chronic lack of sleep are more likely to experience sports-related injuries.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control recommend that middle and high schoolers start no earlier than 8:30 a.m.
“With puberty, the circadian system naturally delays such that bedtime and wake time are later than before,” research published by the agency in 2022 reads. “This can be aggravated by modern social factors. Adolescent sleep patterns differ on school days and non-school days, with truncated sleep during the week and catch-up sleep on weekends and holidays. It is as if the teenager had flown east across two to three time zones and suffered from jet lag.”
Despite the mounting research, experts at Pitt’s Center for Sleep and Circadian Science said there has not been a major shift toward later start times. Across Pennsylvania, 40 school districts have pushed back their high school start times, including Pittsburgh Public Schools which went from a 7:15 a.m. start to a 7:45 a.m. start last year. The state has 500 school districts and hundreds of private and charter schools.
One local school district that made the switch is Hampton Township. The district pushed back the start of high school classes by 50 minutes to 8:20 a.m. in 2021. John Thornton, director of student services at the Hampton Township School District, said in the last few years, he’s noticed a positive change.
“I think it’s really been beneficial,” he said. “I definitely think we have happier kids.”
Critics of delaying school start times often cite the logistical headache of rearranging family schedules and transportation to accommodate the shift. That was a major point of consideration in Hampton, Thornton said. He stressed that districts considering this change should allow for a grace period to plan and a lot of community feedback.
In the case where high school students are responsible for caring for their younger siblings before and after school, Thornton said the district implemented a “bus room” where students could be dropped off earlier. The district also partnered with the local YMCA to expand before and after school care options.
Wendy Troxel, a senior behavioral and social scientist at the RAND corporation, said she appreciated the concern about rescheduling morning and after-school activities like part-time jobs. But she stressed that districts that have already made the shift could guide those considering it.
“These are big logistical challenges for school districts to deal with, but they have been addressed,” Troxel said. “There are models out there. So, everybody doesn't have to reinvent the wheel.”
But Thornton acknowledged that not all districts will have the resources to solve these problems. Some districts may need to add bus routes to accommodate primary, middle and high school students after the switch. And student athletes haven’t seen their WPIAL schedules pushed back, so they’re missing more periods than they were before.
Deanna Philpott, a school wellness consultant and former North Hills school board member, said funding for additional bus routes could come from the state legislature. She praised legislators last year who proposed a bill that would mandate secondary schools begin their day no earlier than 8:15 a.m. by the 2026-2027 school year. That bill stalled in committee, so it would need to be reintroduced to move forward.
“It was a huge win to get that bill introduced even to begin with,” she said. “It really should be something that has bipartisan support.”
Philpott noted that both California and Florida passed similar legislation on school start times despite the states finding themselves at odds on many other issues. She said a statewide mandate could solve some scheduling issues including aligning athletic events with later school hours.
“The more that we can get school districts that do this at the same time, then you don't have this issue of school districts lagging,” she argued.
Though all speakers at Pitt’s Sleep and Circadian Science research day acknowledged that a major societal shift like changing school start times would not be easy, Troxel pointed to the resilience and adaptability schools displayed during the COVID-19 pandemic as proof that such a change is possible.
“We do have a natural experiment that happened in our society overnight that demonstrated that school districts can and will radically change the educational environment when there's a public health imperative,” she said.
