By Roger Rafael Rojas

During the summer of 2015 my mind was on getting money. I got hired at at McDonald’s in Boston with a 24/7 drive thru, and it was right next to a highway exit. I had one of the most undesirable shifts: the overnight shift from 10:00 p.m. – 6:00 a.m.. I felt like a vampire, sleeping throughout the day and being wide awake at night. Once I was back in school, the feeling of being a zombie during the school day stayed.

Teenagers don’t get enough sleep because they have a change in their circadian rhythm once they hit a certain age. Circadian rhythms are like the brain’s internal clock. They signal when to go to bed. There are different stages of sleep. The most important one is REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement). “REM sleep is really important because it helps memory and learning and so if you’re learning something new and then have a period of REM sleep after that you are going to remember it much better,” said Dr. Judith Owens, a pediatric sleep specialist at Boston Childrens Hospital.^[1] If our body needs 9 hours of sleep and we don’t start feeling tired until about 11pm, but we have to get up at dawn, tell me now, where can we fit in those 9 hours of sleep? Start high school later!

I interviewed Assistant Superintendent for Secondary Education and Special Programs for Newton Public Schools Toby Romer about the pros and cons of starting the school day later.

Toby: When I was headmaster for Brighton High School in 2004 the start time was 7:25.

Roger: That’s wicked early.

Toby: While I was there we were able to move it back to 7:40.  What we figured out was that students from certain neighborhoods in Hyde Park, for example, if they took the first MBTA bus that came to their neighborhood all the way to Forest Hills and follow the schedule from there, they couldn’t even make it Brighton High by 7:25 on the MBTA. It was impossible to get there on time based on public transportation.

Roger: My school starts at 8:30.

Toby: That’s much more reasonable.

Roger: I read that Newton High Schools decided not to start later next year. Can you talk a bit more about that decision?

Toby: The reason why we’re not doing anything next year is not because we think it’s a bad idea. We understand it would be a very good idea to start high school later and it would be better for student health especially and for their level of stress if it started later,

We decided not to make a change too quickly and start next year because there’s a lot of logistical issues and tradeoffs that we have to do a lot of planning around before we make any decisions about

Student jobs are one of the factors. Some students start work at 2:30 or 3:00 and if they’re getting out of school a lot later they might not be able to get to work and have the same jobs.

A second concern is younger siblings. I know this is just as true in Boston as in Newton: a lot of high school students get out of school and go pick up their brothers and sisters at the elementary schools. In Newton all the elementary schools get out after the high schools so it’s easy to do but for some families that would be an issue if we changed the start times because there would nobody to pick up the little brothers and sisters.

Another factor to consider is sports after school. In the fall or the spring there isn’t a lot of daylight after daylight savings time so you’d likely only get about an hour of practice if you get out too late in the afternoon. Some sports like soccer would have to have really, really short practices for half of the season after the time changes. That’s the trade off. When we think about kids being healthy because they’re getting better sleep, playing sports also makes you healthy, right? So, if kids are playing less sports that make you less healthy.  That’s the trade off and we’re trying to figure out if there’s another way around that. Maybe we need more lights so they can play on a lighted field and stay an extra hour.

The last issue, which is the trickiest because it involves money, is around school buses. The way the buses work in Newton, and it’s the same in Boston, the buses make two or three trips every morning and every afternoon to bring students in so that’s why schools start at different times. Schools start at all different times so they can make two or three trips with one school bus – they save a lot of money doing that. So if all the high schools are going to start later, does that mean the elementary schools should start earlier or does that mean we have to have extra school buses available? That costs a lot of money. That’s another factor we have to consider.

It sounds like it should be a simple thing, but it comes down to money.

---

1. Judith Owens, in discussion with author, January 8^th, 2016. ↑