CDC report: US middle, high schools’ early start times harm students’ health

But changing the starting time for schools isn’t so easy.

The average start time for classes in the Unites States is 8:03 am. “Early school start times, however, are preventing many adolescents from getting the sleep they need.”.

Fairfax, Montgomery and Arlington high schools begin before 8:30 a.m. Start times vary in Prince George’s; most high schools begin around 7:45 a.m. DuVal starts at 8 a.m. and Croom Vocational begins at 9:30 a.m.

Scientists have said that middle and high schools need to start no earlier than 8:30 a.m.to ensure teens get a good enough sleep the night before.

The report said no schools in Hawaii, Mississippi and Wyoming started at 8:30 a.m. or later. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended schools push back start times until 8:30.

“Getting enough sleep is important for students’ health safety and academic performance”, said Anne Wheaton, lead author and epidemiologist in CDC’s Davison of Population Health. School start time policies are not determined at the federal or state level, but at the district or individual school level. Louisiana has the earliest start time at 7:40 a.m., while Alaska has the latest start time of 8:33am.

Experts recommend adolescents get at least eight and a half hours of sleep a night, but a government survey released Thursday suggests the vast majority of U.S. middle and high schools begin their school days too early to allow for that.

The figure comes from a U.S. Department of Education survey conducted in the 2011-12 school year, so it predates the 2014 AAP recommendation for a later starting time.

Not enough sleep can lead to numerous health risks such as being overweight, drinking alcohol, smoking tobacco, using other drugs and poor academic performance, the agency said.

“It makes absolutely no sense”, said physician M. Safwan Badr, a past president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

“It’s a logistical nightmare”, said Daniel Domenech, executive director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association., who said that school districts have to consider the cost of school buses, as well as traffic and after-school activity schedules. Elementary schools will start 10 minutes later – a move made not for the benefit of small children, who usually wake earlier than older kids, but to accommodate school bus schedules.

“Your kids are not lazy-bones”, he said. Adolescents sleep habits tend to reflect those of their parents.

There are ways, the authors report, to help children get adequate sleep, one of which is to work on setting a consistent bed and rise time-even on the weekends.

When asked about their day, kids remember many things but first period oftentimes remains a mystery precisely because they are too sleepy to pay attention in class. Much like those moments before falling asleep, when the sleepiness takes over and you start drifting off, early mornings are quite hard to remember because the body is doing its best to keep up with the stress of being up before getting enough rest.