Schools Should Set Start Times To Students' Biological Clocks

Anyone who has ever been a teenager recalls the horror of early rising during those heady years. And school administrators know about research that supports the need many teens feel to sleep till noon. Yet most school systems insist that bus schedules and the convenience of parents and staff make it imperative to cling to school hours created when we were a nation of farmers and factory hands.

Now, after many months of rigorous study by a task force of parents, teachers, students and others, the Fairfax County School Board is considering whether to overhaul starting times and let teenagers sleep an hour or two later each morning. As someone who has never quite gotten past his teenage predilection for sleeping from 3 a.m. to 11 a.m., I can only stand and cheer at the possibility of such a reform.

Don't start the celebration quite yet: Yes, the Transportation Task Force has called for a wholesale shift in start times that would have high schools open at 8:45 a.m. and go to 3:45 p.m., and let middle schools have an even more civilized and productive day, from 9:20 to 4:30.

But Fairfax administrators are already balking at such change. In a memo to School Board members, Chief Operating Officer Dean Tistadt says the system has three choices:

1. "Thank the task force for its great work but shelve the issue for the time being due to the enormous budget difficulties facing the school system over the next several years."

2. Put the task force's report out to parents and seek a broader public discussion. (In other words, punt.)

3. Accept the recommendation for later start times, direct the staff to put together more humane bus schedules and then see how the public reacts.

Tistadt recommended a version of the third option but added a strong note of skepticism. The county has gone down this road at least a couple of times before, only to pull back from any real change. Tistadt said the proposed change in bus schedules -- basically sending elementary school kids to school earlier so older kids might sleep later -- would be expensive, and added expenses are not in the cards given the state of the economy.

Some school systems have moved to later starts with good results. Arlington did it a few years ago, and that system's study of the impact of later start times for teenagers impressively confirms that many students are just not capable of paying full attention at the preposterously early times when many local schools open for business.

"Research on the impact of school start times and adolescent behavior guided the decisions about changing the schedules, and this study concludes that the change had its desired impact on the main beneficiaries, high school students," the Arlington report says.

Teachers and students agreed: Kids perform better when school starts at a rational hour. The downside to the change, Arlington found, came at the middle school level, because those kids had to start earlier to let high school kids come in later. There are only so many buses and bus drivers; when routes have to be run in shifts, someone has to go first.

The Fairfax proposal would put that burden in the most logical place, on elementary school kids, who tend to get up earlier anyway. But opponents of the change argue that little kids ought not have to stand outside in the early morning darkness while waiting for a bus. No one wants little kids standing on street corners in the dark, but there are only so many hours of daylight. If the wait in the dark isn't in the morning, it's bound to be in the afternoon, when more drivers are drunk, speeding or otherwise endangering kids.

And under the Fairfax proposal, the earliest elementary school start time would be 7:50 a.m., when even in December the sun is up. The task force approved its call for new, later start times by a vote of 22 to 5, with 13 abstentions, which goes to show you that some people are early people and some are late people.

The Fairfax proposal wisely assigns middle-schoolers to the latest schedule. Yes, high school kids probably have the toughest time getting rolling in the morning. But task force members smartly realized that middle school kids are the ones who generally get into the most mischief in those after-school hours when parents may be at work, unable to supervise their children. The task force's solution: Keep middle school kids at school as late as possible to make sure they are occupied during that prime time for getting into trouble.

All that's left now is for the School Board to stand up to bus schedulers and give young people the chance to show their best. It's time to let go of our agrarian past.