Schools causing sleep loss in teens

High school students suffer from early classes and school starting times every day. Not only does it cause insufficient sleep for children but it is also a circadian rhythm disruption. This can cause further struggles like falling asleep at night and waking up during the night. The harm this causes is far greater than the benefit of earlier starting times, and something needs to change.

Currently starting times for schools cause many issues for teens, and it would be beneficial to change that time with any form of solution. When proposed the issue to Dr. Graham, the principal of Jenison High School, he said, “Transportation and all of the extracurricular activities is the biggest challenge.” With those issues in mind, Dr.Graham also stated, “I think there is merit to pushing it back a bit, although after-school sports dictate what we’re allowed to do.” Even through these difficulties, there are reasons it should be of the school’s concern to make a change to the situation.

In the article “School start times for adolescents”, the American Academy of Pediatrics states that “from a biological perspective, at about the time of pubertal onset, most adolescents begin to experience a sleep-wake “phase delay” (later sleep onset and wake times), manifested as a shift of up to 2 hours relative to sleep-wake cycles in middle childhood”. Because of this fact, the article further goes on to state that “the evidence strongly implicates earlier school start times (i.e. before 8:30 am) as a key modifiable contributor to insufficient sleep.” A benefit for teens to wake up later than their current start time of 8 am.

“One factor is delayed timing of nocturnal melatonin secretion across adolescence that parallels a shift in circadian phase preference from more ‘morning’ type to more ‘evening’ type, which consequently results in difficulty falling asleep at an earlier bedtime.”  With students having difficulty falling asleep at earlier bedtimes, also means that teens can work later at night.

Teagan Reidt, A student at Jenison high school who is on the volleyball and dance team says, “I like to work a little later at night after I’ve had a break from school because I find that’s when it’s easiest for me to get focused and finish everything”.

With more rest time for teens and more time awake in the mornings, more can get done before school as well. Teens can have time to get a healthy breakfast, refresh study for any tests, and feel active and awake through all of their classes in the day, not just the later ones. With all of the benefits explained it would be within the school’s best interest to look into a change.

Pushing school starting time back is not the only option for change. There is also the thought of  “split schooling” where the school time is split in half into two sessions 7-1:45 and 2-8:45. With that option, students would be able to choose their session of school that fits best for their schedule and how they feel they work best. That way not everyone has to choose early school sessions that challenge them to get enough sleep. Also if a student wanted to pick a sport during the year, for that quarter of school they would have to pick an early session. When asked if split schooling would work for sports at Jenison Tim Ritsema (The sports director at JHS) said, “Yes, if you did a split schedule it wouldn’t be too hard of an impact on sports.” 

Considering these factors, solution options, and many other ways to go: something can be done to fix the issue of sleepless teens because of school.