Apodaca: Students need more sleep, later start time

What if I told you that there is a guaranteed way to instantly boost students’ academic results while simultaneously improving their physical and mental health?

Would you say, what are we waiting for, let’s do it now?

Or you might hesitate, wondering if there really exists such a magic elixir that could have so positive an impact on our kids.

Well, there is and it does. Or it would, if we only had the courage and the will to force schools to change.

What is this wonder tonic? Sit tight, here it is:

Start the school day later. In some cases, much later.

There is a large and growing body of research that clearly demonstrates both the deleterious effects of early school start times on students and the benefits of pushing back the first bell to a time that more closely synchs with kids’ natural rhythms.

A wide range of experts in everything from pediatric medicine to education policy have increasingly raised alarms over our children’s collective lack of sufficient sleep, and have cited too-early school days as a chief culprit.

Last year, for instance, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a policy statement urging middle schools and high schools to alter their start times to no earlier than 8:30 a.m. to help students get adequate sleep to improve their overall health.

The great majority of schools don’t meet that standard. Just last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Education released the results of a large study showing that fewer than one in five middle schools and high schools nationwide began at the recommended 8:30 a.m. or later start time in the 2011-2012 academic year.

“Getting enough sleep is important for students’ health, safety and academic performance,” said Anne Wheaton, Ph.D., lead author and epidemiologist in the CDC’s Division of Population Health. “Early school start times, however, are preventing many adolescents from getting the sleep they need.”

The focus is put on adolescents and teenagers because these are the ages at which kids are most likely to suffer from school schedules that don’t mesh with their internal clocks. Teen biology is basically programmed to favor late night-late morning sleep patterns. Yet we almost always gear school start times to the hours that are more conducive to adult patterns.

We’re learning more and more about the damaging effects. By forcing kids into unnatural schedules, we mess with such important biological functions as melatonin production. Melatonin is a hormone that prepares our bodies for sleep and while we’re sleeping it acts as a kind of anti-oxidant, mopping up toxins that can damage cells.

What’s more, by starting school too early, we are in effect trying to teach kids at the very time of day when their bodies and brains aren’t wired for wakefulness. Not surprisingly, early school days contribute to memory problems as well as distressing conditions including depression and obesity.

Another big report issued last year by the University of Minnesota’s Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement found that schools that switched to later start times showed significant improvement in several areas, including rates of attendance and tardiness, standardized test scores and other measures of academic performance, and substance abuse and depression.

Some schools in the study also found a sizable drop in car crashes involving teens.

Many school officials raise a long list of arguments for starting school early. Some cite traffic patterns and transportation issues as factors or argue that retooling schedules would be too costly. Some parents are also reluctant to push for change for a variety of reasons, including concerns over meshing their own work schedules with their kids’ schooling and worries that later start times will interfere with extra-curricular activities.

The biggest obstacle is sports. I’m a sports fan, and both my sons were on teams until they graduated from Corona del Mar High. But athletic programs often wield disproportionate power with few checks and balances on coaches, who sometimes demand that team commitments take precedence over everything else in students’ lives. Sports has, in effect, become the tail that wags the dog.

We need to wake up and realize this is a very real and important issue. When kids nod off in class, have trouble paying attention, and can’t remember their lessons we can’t just write it all off as evidence that they’re lazy, unfocused, or bored. It’s far more likely that they’re chronically exhausted.

Indeed, my sons’ junior and senior years at CdM were excruciating displays of what one expert refers to as “pathological sleepiness.” In order to take the classes they wanted they were locked into the almost farcically-named “zero period,” which started at 6.55 a.m. It seemed so wrong at the time. Now there is ample evidence to support that instinct.

So Newport-Mesa Unified School District, I’m calling on you to do what’s right. Solicit input from teachers, administrators, parents, medical professionals, students and others in the community. Be open-minded and creative but mostly be determined to set the school clocks back to more reasonable hours.

There will undoubtedly be opposition to change and a million excuses for doing nothing. But the bottom line is that we aren’t doing what’s best for our kids. We can and must do better.

PATRICE APODACA is a former Newport-Mesa public school parent and former Los Angeles Times staff writer. She lives in Newport Beach.