Lauren Dempsey, MS in Biomedicine and Law, RN, FISM News 

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Thanks to a newly implemented law in California, middle school and high schoolers can sleep in a little longer in the mornings.

The bill, SB-328, was passed in 2019 and mandates later start times. Legislators are hoping that this will help teens and pre-teens get more sleep, which is important to overall health.

The law previously had given the governing board of each school district the authority to set times for the school day. However, the new law decrees that public high schools cannot start the school day before 8:30 a.m. and middle schoolers can start the day no earlier than 8 a.m. The changes, which went into effect July 1, will not apply to rural school districts.

Senator Anthony Portantino, the author of the bill, worked with the California PTA and Start School Later to implement this sort of legislative change that they believe will have a positive impact on children in the state. The bill is based on recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics, which has advised that high schools should not start before 8:30 a.m.

“I’m over the moon that California has recognized the importance of science and will now put our children’s health and welfare at the forefront of the decision-making process,” Portantino said. “Generations of children will benefit from starting later in the morning as we know that test scores, attendance, and graduation rates all improve after shifting to a later start time.  As a parent, I am also pleased that depression, sports injuries, suicidal thoughts, and car accidents all decline as well.  This is truly a special day for kids.”

California may have been the first state to pass legislation for later start times, but they aren’t the first state in the country to put the policy into practice. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics shows that 17% of public high schools and 24% of public charter schools in the United States start at or after 8:30 a.m.

Yet, according to the CDC, 72.7% of high school students don’t get the recommended eight to 10 hours of sleep on school nights. Research has shown that children who do not get the recommended amount of sleep are at increased risk for chronic conditions such as diabetes, obesity, and poor mental health, as well as injuries, attention and behavioral problems, and poor academic performance.

It has also been found that short sleep duration has been found to be associated with engaging in riskier behaviors among high school students.

Steven Lockley, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and a neuroscientist has been involved in studies showing the benefits of adequate sleep in adolescents and suggests that school start times should be synchronized to “adolescent biology.” He told TODAY that “Early school start times guarantee that children, and particularly adolescents, will become sleep deprived as their circadian clocks and sleep regulation systems naturally push sleep to a later time, making it harder to go to sleep early enough to get sufficient sleep before school.”

Circadian rhythms change with age, telling us when to eat, sleep, and affect activity levels based on light and temperature. According to the Sleep Foundation, teenagers “have a sleep drive that builds more slowly,” with their bodies producing melatonin later in the evening.

“If you don’t sleep, you can’t learn, and therefore not only will better sleep improve alertness and attention in the daytime at school, it will also improve the learning during sleep that results from the better attention,” Lockley said.