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.

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.

“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.

But Florida state Rep. Patricia Hawkins-Williams, a Democrat who voted against the measure, said she was concerned about costs, especially for smaller school districts. The issue for many school districts is that allowing high schools to start closer to elementary and middle school start times means running more buses. The legislature set aside $5 million to plan, implement and evaluate the new start times, but Hawkins-Williams said she worries districts will be on the hook after that initial money runs out.

“While the students are going back and forth [on buses to school], it’s the responsibility of the districts and it will increase the cost to the district and is a recurring cost every year,” she said in an interview with Stateline. “The state often puts these things together and pushes them down to the local school districts.”

She said she understood the studies about the benefits to kids but added, “The cost outweighed the benefits.”

Studies agree on later starts

The average start time for public high schools was 8 a.m. during the 2017-2018 school year, according to 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 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  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.”

California legislators first passed a bill in 2018, but then-Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, vetoed it amid opposition by teachers unions and many local school districts. But by 2019, many teachers and the state PTA had come around to support the idea of later start times, and the bill was passed and signed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.

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 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.”

Of the more than 9,000 students who participated in the University of Minnesota study, those who slept eight or more hours each night were less likely to report symptoms of depression and to fall asleep in class. And the number of car crashes in the districts studied decreased by 13%.

“It’s about educating parents and teens, that they will look better and do better in school, and do better in sports if they will go to bed at 11:15 and get up at 7:30,” Wahlstrom said in an interview with Stateline. Parents should also take cellphones and other electronic devices away after 11 p.m., she said.

Concerns in other states

Sometimes new start times come with a few hiccups.

In Howard County, Maryland, an affluent public school district with about 57,000 students, new start times, combined with a new bus company and an insufficient number of bus drivers, resulted in chaos in the opening weeks of class last month. Some buses never showed up or were hours late, leaving kids stranded. A new app that was supposed to allow parents to track bus whereabouts failed, leaving parents furious.

In response to queries from Stateline, Brian Bassett, spokesperson for Howard County schools, said district administrators were not aware until the first day of school in late August that all the routes were not being covered by the bus company, Zum, due to lack of drivers.

In a report to the community, Superintendent Michael Martirano said the new start times’ effect on transportation had been studied for six months, but that they were just one of a number of factors in the bus mess.

“The compression of the start times to support our goal of starting schools later has taken out any slack that we used to have in our routes and it is not realistically possible to keep [all] buses … on schedule due to the tight turnaround,” he said. Further, he said, “it is highly likely that an adjustment to some bell times, as well as pick-up times, will be necessary to make sure ALL buses can arrive on time and students do not have to endure long wait times in the afternoon to get picked up.”

In an email to Stateline, Zum, based in Redwood City, California, said almost all of the Howard County bus routes had been covered by the end of the second week but acknowledged there were still delays due to route “stacking,” in which buses drop off students at school and immediately begin another route. The company blamed Howard County for the quick-turnaround schedules, which, it said in an email, “leave no time for our drivers to safely unload their students and begin their next route.”

No system changes had been implemented as of early September.

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.” Now age 35 and representing the town where she went to high school, Daughtry has sponsored a later start time bill for several sessions without success.

This year, she got students to testify in favor, but was met with opposition from some lawmakers and the Maine Education Association, which testified that such a change would pose “operational and logistical challenges.”

“Our schools serve students whose parents do not have the workplace flexibility for a later drop off, and their experiences and schedules must be considered,” the union said in written testimony to the legislature.

But Daughtry said such concerns pale beside the advantages, including reduction in obesity rates and diabetes, and less risky behaviors when kids get more sleep. She said she understands the challenges facing working families, and called for communities to take child care needs into account.

“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.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on and .

Darek Perez knows the benefits of a good night’s sleep. The freshman psychology major at the University of Texas at El Paso researched the topic and presented the results during his “Introduction to Psychology” course last fall, but knowing the benefits of sleep and doing are two different things.

Perez was among a handful of UTEP undergraduates who said they went to bed around midnight only to wake up five, six or seven hours later to start their day. Most admitted to feeling drowsy and unfocused at some point in the afternoon. A cup of coffee or a nap often helped them get through the day.

College students often take pride in their ability to overextend themselves to accommodate their academics, outside jobs, personal responsibilities and time with friends, but researchers have found that burning the candle at both ends eventually will lead to burnout or worse. Common symptoms of sleep deprivation include fatigue, depression, anxiety and irritability. Severe symptoms could include hallucinations and impaired judgment.

The the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, and the Sleep Research Society recommend that college students get seven to nine hours of sleep. Studies have shown that college students average about seven hours of sleep, but about 60% of them have poor quality sleep. That means they wake up tired and feel sleepy during the day.

“I know what I need to do, but I have not progressed to the point of putting more sleep into my schedule,” said Perez, who balances a full class schedule with an on-campus job. “I’m too busy.”

Students such as Perez are the reason that UTEP’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) developed several workshops that focus on how students can prepare for a restful sleep, and the many benefits of sleep. CAPS generally offers these programs once per semester, but it also makes these presentations at the request of faculty and departments with student workers, said Brian Sneed, CAPS director and a staff psychologist.

As college students prepare for their finals in early May, many of them will be stressed, and sleep deprived as they cram for exams. Sneed said the better suggestion to succeed academically around finals – and throughout the semester – is to get a good night’s sleep.

One of the more popular CAPS programs on this topic is “The ABC’s of Z’s,” where counselors emphasize the importance of having a routine before bedtime to train the body for sleep. He also recommends students refrain from caffeinated drinks later in the day and create a cooler sleeping environment.

Sneed said his counselors work with many students with newfound independence who have developed bad habits that hinder their ability to sleep well. He said that some students have mental battles between their priorities of academics and socializing and the workshops help students to refocus.

“A consistent eight hours of sleep is going to maximize your learning potential,” Sneed said during an interview in his CAPS office on the second floor of Union Building West. “Some people don’t prioritize that.”

The psychologist said science has shown that trying to catch up on sleep during weekends and late-night cram sessions before a test do not work. He said lack of sleep disrupts the ability for people to file short-term information in their long-term memory.

“If you don’t get enough sleep, it’s as if you’re crumpling (information) up and throwing it in a filing cabinet and then hoping at some point you can pull the right one out during the test,” Sneed said.

The NSF reported that a person taking a final exam after pulling an all-night study session has the same effect as taking a test with a blood alcohol level of 0.05%.

Researchers recently published the results of a sleep study of first-year college students at three different institutions. The findings in in the peer-reviewed journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) included that every lost hour of nightly sleep equated to a 0.07 drop in end-of-term GPA.

Dana Garcia, a freshman microbiology major, said that she usually goes to bed at midnight and wakes up seven hours later. Her pre-sleep routine is to brush her teeth, take a natural sleep supplement, and do a final check of her phone or laptop computer.

She said she gets tired by late afternoon, and usually rests after she returns to her Horizon City home.

“If I don’t get my seven hours of sleep, I have trouble waking up,” Garcia said. “It affects my school day.”

At workshops, CAPS representatives suggest self-awareness techniques that students can use to relieve stress, relax mind and body, and take care of the real issues that affect them as they prepare for sleep.

Sneed said one method is to combine thought and touch. Students use their thumb to touch their fingertips one at a time and contemplate a positive thought for each finger such as a good thing that happened that day, something that made them feel good that day, a happy memory, and something that makes them proud of themselves. This technique moves the mind from a stressful place of deadlines and assignments to a more positive plane.

Sleep is not an issue for Christian Sierra, a senior mechanical engineering major. He said he usually goes to bed at midnight and wakes up six hours later. He said that he drinks a cup of coffee in the afternoon to get through his classes.

“I stay up late because that’s when I can get things done,” Sierra said.

Before bed, he takes a shower, brushes his teeth and turns on his desk fan, which cools his room and produces a soft hum.

“If it’s too quiet or too warm, I know I forgot to turn on my fan,” Sierra said.

In serious cases of sleep deficiency, counselors work with students to learn if problems such as insomnia are brought on by stress, anxiety and depression, or vice versa, to offer the right treatment. Chronic sleep deprivation could build into psychosis, a mental disorder where the mind disconnects from reality.

If students come to CAPS with sleep-related issues, counselors initially will suggest the students rule out physical or biological issues. If the problem persists, CAPS will try to address it because they understand the value of sleep.

As Thomas Roth, former editor-in-chief of the journal Sleep, said, “Sleep is an investment in the energy you need to be effective tomorrow.”

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Updated Jan. 6

Teenagers need  to be at their best, but few get anywhere near that amount. That’s often due to factors outside their control, like school hours and homework levels.

Many schools have been taking notice — and making changes to promote teen sleep.

Even before COVID-19 was added to the mix, teen stress and anxiety were at record levels. In 2019, 36.7 percent of high school students said they felt sad or hopeless, and close to 19 percent had seriously considered suicide, according to .

Meanwhile, teen sleep was at record lows, with just 22 percent of high schoolers getting at least 8 hours of sleep on an average weeknight, the CDC found. Not getting enough sleep is a major contributor to .

Given the growing awareness of the importance of teen sleep, schools around the country (and around the world) have pushed back their start times to more teen-friendly hours, in accordance with the recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics and other major medical and public-health medical organizations.

Last year, California became the first (and only) state in the nation to enact statewide requirements for its public secondary schools. Those changes — requiring school start times no earlier than 8 am for middle schools, and no earlier than 8:30 am for high schools — went into effect just before the 2022-2023 school year and have prompted similar proposed legislation in and .

Meanwhile, some schools are making additional modifications to address teen sleep and stress.

Changes schools are making to increase teen sleep and reduce teen stress

Implementing block schedules

In place of a traditional schedule, in which students attend every class every day, block schedules are a way to modify class frequency and duration. For example, students may attend half of their classes one day and the other half of their classes the following day, but have longer class periods. With a block schedule, “homework workload may not decrease in terms of hours… but it will decrease in terms of how many subjects you have to hit each night,” says Denise Pope, co-founder of , an organization that advises schools, students, and parents about more effective approaches to education that incorporate student well-being. While students still have the same amount of homework, focusing on fewer subjects “is better from a brain-efficiency standpoint,” she says.

Two schools that have worked with Challenge Success and subsequently moved to block schedules are , a public school in Burlingame, CA, and , a parochial school in Belmont, CA.

Reducing students’ workload

Another option Challenge Success recommends is re-evaluating overall homework levels, which can include capping the number of  and honors classes that students take. It’s an option that’s increasingly being instituted at many schools, including , a public school in Irvine, CA, which limits freshmen to two AP or honors classes and allows one additional class each year. Students who wish to add another advanced-level class must sign a waiver (as must their parents). The change was one of several instituted at the school after consulting with Challenge Success to help reduce stress levels and allow students to get more sleep.

Limiting sports practices

At , a public school in Biddeford, ME, the focus on teen sleep included restricting morning and evening sports and extracurriculars. The changes took place in 2016 to coincide with the start time shift from 7:15 am to 8:30 am. “During the school year, all morning practices are off limits,” says Jeremy Ray, district superintendent. (Previously, swimming and ice hockey had practices as early as 5 am.)

Evening practices now have a 9 pm ending time, although occasionally games end later than that when travel time is factored in, Ray acknowledges. Still, “I would say 95 percent of our season works within those parameters,” he says.

Using schedule simulators

At , a public school in Fairfax, VA, student programmers launched an online schedule simulator in 2017 that allows students to estimate their total time commitments for school-related activities. The simulator was based on data gathered by polling teachers and students and includes classes, sports, and school clubs.

Shadowing students

As part of the planning process, some teachers even opt to spend an entire school day experiencing what it’s like from a student’s perspective. These “shadow days” can be a good reality check, Pope and her co-authors note in their 2015 book, . As one middle school teacher quoted in the book sums up: “It was a really overwhelming day! The students have so many things they’re trying to do every day, and it was just exhausting for the teachers to be the student for the day and try to follow.”

While shadow days and schedule simulators may not be the norm at every school, there are still ways for students and their families to apply these same principles when planning class schedules. Pope suggests that students talk to peers to get a sense of the workload of various classes, then create a mock schedule listing the estimated time commitments for all of their proposed classes and extracurriculars, making sure to slot in enough time for sleep.

Sharing information about teen sleep

Regardless of which strategies schools use, there’s an additional approach that can help set the stage for success: educating teens and the broader community about the importance of sleep.

One initiative, , was first rolled out at the college level and is now being expanded to middle and high schools. The content was developed in conjunction with Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s Sleep Health Institute. It’s available for free via  and was designed so that teachers can integrate it with each state’s health curriculum, notes Pallas Ziporyn, project manager.

“Education is a key component in promoting awareness about how critical teen sleep is,” adds Joy Wake, California outreach coordinator for Let’s Sleep.

Next steps

For parents

Inquire about the guidelines your teen’s school has in place to address workload issues like teen stress and teen sleep. For resources, including a time-scheduling worksheet, visit .

For teachers and administrators

Read about effective homework and how to manage student workloads in Challenge Success’ blog, . For more information about incorporating information about teen sleep into school activities and classroom instruction, visit .

The is a short take about interesting academic work.

The big idea

Small financial incentives can get college students to go to bed earlier and sleep significantly longer. That’s what my colleagues and I found through an that involved 508 students at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Oxford.

When the students were offered $7.50 per night Monday through Thursday – a total of $30 per week – to sleep longer, they were 13% more likely than those who were not offered the incentive to sleep seven to nine hours. They were also 16% less likely to sleep fewer than six hours.

We collected data from wearable activity trackers, surveys and time-use diaries. The people to whom the incentives were offered were chosen randomly from the group of people who agreed to be part of the study.

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The incentives were offered for three weeks, but the effects lasted even after they were removed. Specifically, those who had initially gotten the incentives were still 9% more likely to sleep seven to nine hours per night for up to six weeks after students stopped receiving them. This suggests the effects of the incentives may last for several weeks.

The time-use diaries documented a reduction in screen time. That is, students spent less time watching TV and videos or using smart devices during the experiment. There was no evidence of a decline in time spent studying or in time spent socializing. This suggests students gave up screen time rather than time with friends to get to bed earlier and sleep longer.

Why it matters

Sleep deprivation has been as a . It can have , decision-making and productivity. Our findings shine light on what it takes to get people to adopt better sleeping habits and avoid these negative outcomes.

Sleep deprivation is a big problem among college students. Most college students the .

Good sleep is associated with . Sleep deprivation and poor sleep quality have been linked to .

Since college often marks the first time young adults may find themselves fully in charge of their schedules, they could benefit from help or incentives to form good sleep habits.

indicate that many people feel they are . When people experience a night of poor sleep, the effects are felt the next day.

Our results suggest that just knowing about the benefits of good sleep is not enough for people to actually adopt better sleeping habits. Rather, it may take incentives.

Interventions that help individuals form routines, such as reduced screen time, may have longer-lasting effects.

What is still unknown

A relevant question is whether similar people can be motivated to get better sleep without monetary incentives and with less costly nudges.

What’s next

In the future, we plan to explore whether interventions to improve sleep habits during college may also help students boost their academic performance. We’d also like to examine whether these interventions can work with different populations and in different places.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .