California and Florida have become the first states to require later public school start times, a response to reams of research showing significant advantages for high school students who can get more sleep by beginning their day at 8:30 a.m. or later.
But such changes come with difficult ripple effects — upended bus schedules, later starts for extracurriculars and new schedules for teachers and staff — making many other states and localities hesitant to change.
California’s first-in-the-nation law, which requires that high school classes start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. and middle schools not before 8 a.m., took effect last school year. Florida overwhelmingly passed a law this year with similar requirements, which schools must meet by July 2026.
Baltimore County school buses fill a lot in September 2021. Numerous studies have concluded that the later start times are healthier for kids, and some 1,000-2,000 school districts across the country recently moved high school start times to approximately 8:30 a.m.
But similar efforts in other states have stalled or been reduced to legislation calling for studies of the issue, in the face of opposition from local school districts worried about budgets and parents concerned about upending family schedules. Lawmakers in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Texas all had bills up this year, according to Start School Later, an advocacy group that tracks the bills. But most didn’t pass; Maine, Maryland and Indiana approved studies, the group said.
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“The fact that Florida passed it is a game changer; it shows this really is a bipartisan issue,” said Terra Ziporyn Snider, the group’s executive director and co-founder. There has been legislation proposed in 25 states, she added, but getting these bills through legislatures won’t be easy.
Florida state Rep. John Temple, a Republican who sponsored his state’s measure, told the House Education and Employment Committee in March that when teenagers don’t get enough sleep, their health, safety and academics all suffer, and he noted a requirement for local input. The new law requires district school boards to “discuss local strategies to successfully implement the later school start times.” The measure passed on overwhelmingly bipartisan votes.
The average start time for public high schools was 8 a.m. during the 2017-2018 school year, according to a survey by the National Center for Education Statistics published in 2020, the latest year for which the federal agency has comprehensive statistics.
But Kyla Wahlstrom, a senior research fellow and lecturer at the University of Minnesota, estimates that 1,000-2,000 individual school districts across the country, as well as the two states, have recently moved high school start times to approximately 8:30 a.m. That’s the earliest start time recommended for high schools and middle schools by the American Medical Association.
Numerous studies have concluded that the later start times are healthier for kids, reduce juvenile crime, improve grades, boost sports performance and even result in better teenage driving records, because sleepy teens cause more accidents.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says a lack of sleep is “common” among high school students and is associated with increased risk of being overweight, drinking, smoking, using drugs and poor academic performance. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that high schools not start before 8:30 a.m., and says changing to later start times would result in better outcomes for teens, including reduced obesity risk, lower rates of depression, fewer drowsy driving crashes and improved quality of life.
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that kids 13-18 should sleep eight to 10 hours a day. The policy statement says adolescents of those ages have circadian rhythms that prevent them from falling asleep earlier in the evening. And a study by the Rand Corporation found that the economic benefit of later school start times “would outweigh the costs within five years after the change” in the vast majority of states, mostly due to less use of mental health facilities and juvenile judiciary and detention.
But changing school start times affects more than just the students. After-school activities start later too, reducing teens’ availability for part-time jobs. Parents’ work schedules must be adjusted. Traffic patterns also shift, due to school bus schedules and associated crosswalk delays.
“Community life does revolve around school hours,” said Start School Later’s Ziporyn Snider. “This is why it’s so important to do it legislatively. It’s so hard to do at the local level. It’s hell on Earth dealing with people coming at you with pitchforks when you suggest changing the schedule.”
Part of the difficulty in passing the laws to change start times is a lack of education about teenagers’ sleep, said the University of Minnesota’s Wahlstrom, a leading expert on adolescents’ sleep patterns. Her seminal study in 2017 noted that research as early as the 1990s showed teenagers are “unable to fall asleep before about 10:45 p.m. and remain in sleep mode until about 8 a.m.”
In Maine, Democratic state Sen. Mattie Daughtry has been pressing for later school start times since she was a student at Brunswick High School, where her yearbook goal was to “get more sleep.”
“We need to look at everything as a whole,” she said. “We have an opioid crisis in Maine, and that decreases when folks are well rested. This will boost test scores. The opposition isn’t even partisan. It’s just a lot of folks who say, ‘When I was that age, I did (start early) in school.’ There’s not enough awareness of medical science.”
