That early morning alarm can be hard for anyone and some research has shown it's not good for teens. That's why some states like California and Florida recently passed laws requiring public middle and high schools to delay school start times.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 (alarm beeping)
00:02 That early morning alarm can be hard for anyone,
00:05 and some research has shown it's not good for teens.
00:08 That's why some states like California and Florida
00:11 recently passed laws requiring public middle
00:13 and high schools to delay school start times.
00:15 - Having such an early start time
00:18 makes it really hard for kids to be awake and alert
00:22 to do good learning.
00:24 - It's time to get the kids up for school.
00:26 - That's Stacey Berry-Coffey.
00:28 She has one teen starting middle school,
00:30 the other high school.
00:31 - It's dark and it's gonna get even darker
00:34 in the next month or so.
00:35 - And they have to get up early, like close to 6 a.m.,
00:39 to be ready for the final bell in the 7 a.m. hour.
00:41 - When kids come home after school,
00:44 they do an activity, try and eat dinner,
00:48 and then have to do homework.
00:49 You know, before you know it, it's 10 o'clock
00:51 and they have to be up by, you know, quarter to six
00:54 to catch the 620 bus for pickup.
00:57 - I interviewed Kyla Wallstrom
00:58 with the University of Minnesota,
01:00 and she has researched this topic
01:01 for more than two decades.
01:03 I asked her why we even have these early start times.
01:06 - Older teens and children who lived on the farm
01:09 had to get up and do farm chores.
01:11 - She says the early school start times
01:13 have deep agricultural roots,
01:15 but is that serving students in this day and age?
01:17 Her own research shows not so much.
01:19 - The sleep debt, the debt that is accumulating,
01:23 gets bigger and bigger,
01:25 and it actually will cause the brain to feel fragmented.
01:29 That's why the mood, the moodiness,
01:31 and the emotional regulation gets affected
01:34 by lack of sleep.
01:35 - Wallstrom says teens need about nine and a quarter hours
01:38 of sleep a night.
01:39 Ways to make that happen, she says,
01:40 are having a set bedtime,
01:42 cutting the caffeine after 3 p.m.,
01:44 and removing the cell phone from the bedroom.
01:46 As far as delaying school start times,
01:48 Kyla Wallstrom told me it's not an easy change.
01:51 You have bus schedules to consider,
01:53 you have parents' work schedules to factor in,
01:55 and you have school boards that need to be on the same page.
01:59 But check this out.
02:00 Data from non-profits Start School Later
02:02 shows after California and Florida
02:04 passed their later start laws,
02:06 a lot of other states are considering legislation
02:09 that would do the same.