California Is First State in Nation to Require Later Start Times for Middle and High Schools

Call it a win for the snooze button.

California will become the first state in the nation to require later start times for middle and high schools as part of a new law signed Sunday by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Senate Bill 328 prevents middle schools from ringing the first bell before 8 a.m. and blocks high schools from starting class any earlier than 8:30 a.m. Districts statewide have to adopt the new start-time rules no later than July 1, 2022, a change that could affect several million students.

California schools currently abide by a hodgepodge of start times: Across the state, the average start time at middle and high schools is 8:07 a.m., according to a 2015 analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Pushing the start time back could also lead some schools to end the day later.

"We have the science that says this is a public health issue and a public health crisis," said state Sen. Anthony Portantino, a Democrat representing the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys in Southern California, who introduced the original bill two years ago.

"The morning sleep is the most therapeutic, healthy sleep for teenagers," he told KQED's Forum in 2017. "And what we do as a society, we wake them up in the middle of that healthy sleep and send them to school too early, when they're sleep deprived."

In pushing the bill, Portantino has repeatedly cited a 2014 report from the American Academy of Pediatrics that describes an "epidemic" of sleep deprivation among America's middle and high school students.

"Chronic sleep loss in children and adolescents is one of the most common — and easily fixable — public health issues in the U.S. today," wrote pediatrician Judith Owens, the lead author of the School Start Times for Adolescents report, which recommended pushing back school start times to 8:30 a.m. or later.

Roughly 70% of U.S. teenagers don't get anywhere near the recommended nightly minimum of 8.5 hours each night, the report found, noting that the average adolescent in the U.S. is "chronically sleep deprived and pathologically tired."

Such deprivation, sleep researchers argue, can directly impact academic performance and contribute to the prevalence of serious health issues like depression, obesity, diabetes and car crashes — the number one killer of teens in the U.S.

“Studies have shown that delaying early school start times is one key factor that can help adolescents get the sleep they need to grow and learn," Owens wrote. Doing so would align with the biological sleep rhythms of adolescents, whose sleep-wake cycles — or circadian rhythms — shift up to two hours later when puberty begins, she added.

Portantino told Forum that the roughly 400 school districts nationwide that have already pushed back their start times have seen positive results, with boosts in academic performance, attendance and graduation rates, as well as a decrease in car accidents and suicide attempts.

The bill faced strong opposition, particularly among many school districts, school boards and even some teachers and parents who have argued that scheduling decisions should be made at a local level, given the diverse needs of each community. The delayed schedule will likely lead to lengthy renegotiations with teacher unions and could also require additional funding for the necessary changes in bus transportation.

Some parents have also raised concerns that later start times will be a major inconvenience, making it harder to drop off kids in the morning before work. Later school dismissal times could also disrupt after-school activities and sports, pushing practices even later into the evening.

Last year, former Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed similar legislation, which he called a "one-size-fits-all approach" to an issue best left to local districts.

Troy Flint, a spokesman for the California School Boards Association, said his group has encouraged districts to individually explore later school start times, but doesn't think such broad legislation is the right approach.

"We think that this bill doesn't account for all the variables that you see in different communities," Flint told Forum on Tuesday. "When you take the idea from the abstract and actually try to implement it in practice, there will be a lot of unintended consequences that will prevent it from having the desired effect."

For more on the importance of sleep for the teenage brain, check out this Above the Noise video.