Later start times coming to San Diego schools? Can’t hurt.

Early school start times do more damage to more students than most people realize. It’s a fact. Because of their bodies’ 24-hour physiological cycle, students in middle and high school rarely get the 8.5 to 9.5 hours of sleep they need if schools open earlier than 8:30 a.m. The resulting physical, mental and emotional toll makes these students more likely to suffer from depression, be overweight, get into car accidents and underperform in school, according to decades of academic research.
This is finally starting to sink in around the nation. Districts in 45 states have adopted later start times. Now San Diego Unified is looking at changes. Board members unanimously backed trustee John Lee Evans’ proposal this week to have each “school cluster” — a high school and the schools that feed into it — consider later starts. Good.
There is no question that later school start times can inconvenience parents who need to get their kids to school before work and can cause logistical problems for school districts which can use the same buses more often if start times are staggered. But students’ well-being should ultimately matter more than these concerns.
This common sense hasn’t prevailed yet in the California Assembly. A bill to require that middle and high schools start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. failed in September after being ridiculed by Assemblyman Matthew Harper, R-Huntington Beach, who said, “This one-size-fits-all approach really is kind of ridiculous.”
Is Harper actually suggesting that in some districts, early start times aren’t bad for adolescents? Now that would be ridiculous.
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