California Requires Later Start Times as Albany Considers Changes to District Calendar

By Wendy Chen and Isabel Hall

California will be the first state in the country to require later school start times after Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation requiring middle schools to start no earlier than 8:00 a.m. and high schools to start no earlier than 8:30 a.m beginning in the 2022-23 school year.

According to experts, starting school too early has profound negative effects on students’ health and wellness. If schools push back their start times, experts suggest that students will improve their sleep quality, which may help them learn more efficiently and earn better grades. However, there is also a possibility that students will stay up later when the start time is pushed back.

Some AHS students expressed concern about the change.

“If start times are later, then school is going to go later, which means people are going to spend more time on homework later in the night, which means they’re just waking up later and going to sleep later.” sophomore Lindsey Horisaid. “It doesn’t do anything really--unless they figure out a good way to organize the periods so that school ends at the same time.”

A 2018 Albany High wellness survey shows that 37 percent of students slept less than seven hours a night. This is a concern for students’ mental health. Data from the AHS school board showed that 294 students logged 2869 visits to the mental health facility at AHS in the 2017-18 school year, and out of 302 student visitors last year, 27 had suicidal ideation issues. This could be due to the lack of sleep, according to research showing that teens who sleep longer are healthier and less prone to depression.

The American Association of Pediatrics has supported later start times for years, stating that schools should begin at 8:30 a.m. or later, and teens should get at least 8.5 to 9.5 hours of sleep on a regular basis. California had not done much to address this until the bill was passed.

President of Albany’s Board of Education, Kim Trutane, strongly supports the statewide change.

“I think it was actually very brave of the governor to make the decision to go ahead and sign this bill on the basis of the science,” Trutane said, “because it’s valuing students’ health over all of the difficult logistics that are going to be necessary to make the change.”

Trutane is aware of the later shift for afterschool activities and is confident that by the time fall of 2022 comes around, the district as well as neighboring school districts will be prepared.

Newsom’s primary reason for this change is to increase the amount of sleep teenagers get on weekday nights, but there are multiple arguments still opposing this schedule change, having to do with the community's adjustments to a different afterschool time frame.

Many school boards disagree with the change because extracurricular activities will have to be shifted back and schools that use a bus system as a primary source of transportation may have to adjust their schedules. Also, parents who usually drop their children off at school may have difficulty getting to work on time. Oakland Unified School District opposes the bill, explaining that it is the individual school board’s job to decide what start times work best for them.

Besides changing start times, Trutane also mentioned that the Albany district is considering other changes to improve the working schedule of students. Depending on the recommendations of a district task force and community input, finals week may be moved before the winter break.

“This year we have an academic calendar task force that was told to develop three innovative calendars for the district,” Trutane said, “This is the first time that we’ve had a task force that has student reps and teachers and administrators and parents all on it to try to figure out what’s best for students.”