School start times
Want to know one hugely impactful way to improve sleep and brain health in a whole city or state?
It’s having schools start at a healthy time — a time that lines up with students’ circadian rhythms.
Saint Louis Magazine interviewed me about sleep health and science recently, and I had to bring up Healthy Start Times, the local (St Louis, Missouri) effort to shift school start times. Serendipitously, the St Louis Public Schools district is considering shifting school times later… right now, most high schools start at 7:15, which means that a lot of buses start picking up just after 5AM!
During adolescence, there is a normal shift in the circadian rhythm, where people become more night-owl-ish. Teenagers are not lazy because they tend to sleep later in in the morning, it’s normal biology!
Studies show that healthy school start times that align with circadian rhythms during adolescence improve
attendance
academic performance 🧠
athletic performance
mood and behavioral health
car accident rates
local economy in the long run
I’ve been involved with the HealthyStartTimes STL, the Saint Louis-area effort to shift school times, because the science is absolutely clear that school start times that are excessively early (before 8:30 for teens) lead to poor outcomes.
If you’re an adult thinking “well when I was a kid I had to go to school early and I did fine”… Actually, school start times have crept earlier and earlier in the past few decades, so teens today often have to go to school much earlier than prior generations.
Healthy start times are super feasible! Many school districts, cities, and the entire state of California (by law, in 2022) have mandated later start times for middle- and high-school students, without ill effects.
School start times are a concrete and highly impactful way to improve public health (and happiness). In fact, all relevant healthcare and sleep science associations support school start times of 8:30 or later for teens.
Want to help? If you’re in St Louis, please support HealthyStartTimes STL. School start times for the next academic year are being discussed right now, so please visit website and join the mailing list for letter templates to contact Board of Education members to take action. Or, if you live somewhere else, support your local chapter of the Start School Later initiative.
[Read the St Louis Magazine interview.]
