Sleepyheads: New plan for high school schedule could give teens extra hour at home

Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2002 | 10:49 a.m.

The alarm clock blares at 5:30 a.m. in 16-year-old Ashley Guerrero's Henderson bedroom. She fumbles in the dark for the snooze button. At 5:45 the noise once again intrudes on the Coronado High School sophomore's last, precious minutes of sleep.

By 6 a.m., having seen no activity from her daughter's abode, Ashley's mother calls up the stairs of their home with words loathed universally by teenagers -- "You're going to be late for school!"

Thanks to an innovative plan proposed by Clark County School District high schools in the southeast region, including Coronado, Ashley could get an extra hour's sleep come fall. School district officials hope high school students will be more likely to arrive at school on time, awake and ready to learn when they start their day an hour later.

"An extra hour would be awesome," said Ashley, who picks up two friends each morning for the 10-minute drive to school. "It's hard to wake up when it's still dark outside."

All of the county's high school students currently begin class at 7 a.m. Under a pilot program being considered by five high schools in the southeast region, students who do not rely on the district's buses for transportation could schedule their first class at 8 a.m. Their school day would end at 2:15 p.m.

Green Valley High School was the first in the district to propose the staggered start, and Silverado, Coronado, Basic and Foothill high schools quickly followed, Edward Goldman, superintendent of the southeast region, said.

The decision to switch to a staggered start time was based on the success of similar programs in other school districts across the country, Goldman said.

"Students will be more alert, they won't be as likely to miss first period and attendance should improve," said Goldman, noting the final details of the plan are still being worked out.

Attendance at the five high schools in the pilot program range from 91 percent at Basic High School to 94 percent at Green Valley High School, Goldman said.

"Those percentages are high, but that's still anywhere from 9 to 6 percent of the student population we need to reach," Goldman said.

Betty Sabo, principal of Green Valley High School, said in her 28 years in education she has seen the school start times moved earlier and earlier, usually to accommodate bus schedules.

The staggered start time may cause some inconveniences for students who rely on the bus, but in the long run the change will benefit the entire school community, Sabo said.

"We're in the business of education, not transportation," Sabo said. "Offering a superior educational environment is our priority."

Several high school teachers have questioned whether they will be allowed to choose what time they start work or if they will be assigned one of the two start times, Mary Ella Holloway, president of the Clark County Education Association, said.

"The later start time is a good idea in theory, but we haven't been told enough about how this will actually work," said Holloway, whose organization represents 10,000 teachers in the Clark County School District. "I hope the teachers will have some input on how this is implemented."

Regardless of the new start times, the total length of the school day would not change and teachers would continue to work the seven hours, 11 minutes prescribed under their contracts, Holloway said.

Of the nearly 12,000 students at the five high schools taking part in the pilot program, about a third ride the bus to school, district officials said.

The district has enough buses to get all of the high school and middle school students who need transportation to campus by 8 a.m., and the elementary students to school by 9 a.m., Goldman said. The crunch could come in the afternoon hours, when more students use the bus, Goldman said.

Discussions are under way with Citizens Area Transit to increase the number of buses that stop after school near Silverado, which has the highest percentage of students riding the bus, Goldman said. That would allow more bus-dependent students to take advantage of the new start times.

"We still have some pieces of the puzzle to put in place, but I'm confident we'll get it all worked out," Goldman said.

School district officials' high expectations for the pilot program are supported by research.

The circadian rhythms, or biological clocks, of teenagers are vastly different from other age groups, sleep researchers say. Most adolescents are more alert in the late evening than in the early morning hours.

A 1999 survey by the National Sleep Foundation for 60 percent of American children under 18 complained of being tired during the day, and 15 percent said they had fallen asleep at school during the previous year.

A three-year study by the Minneapolis School District showed an improvement in attendance rates, grades and overall student performance when the high school start times were moved from 7:15 to 8:40 a.m., according to the University of Minnesota's Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement.

There are also health and safety issues at stake that extend beyond the school day, Goldman said.

Sleepiness is a factor in at least 100,000 traffic accidents each year, and more than half of those wrecks involve drivers younger than 25, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Many of the district's juniors and seniors drive themselves to school, which makes "driving while drowsy" a real concern, Goldman said.

"We know teenagers need their sleep and we also know they don't get enough of it," Goldman said. "The later start time should make a significant difference."

Teenagers need about nine hours of sleep each night, but few get it, said Dr. John Pinto, a Las Vegas doctor who specializes in sleep disorders. Too much stimulation -- whether from caffeine, sugar or video games -- keeps adolescents up late, Pinto said.

It's also tough on the rest of the family, said Pinto, the father of three children. Pinto's 16-year-old son attends a Clark County magnet school that will continue its 7 a.m. start time. Pinto said his son has always done poorly in his first class of the day, regardless of the subject.

"I'm a sleep specialist and I should know better, but we've screamed and yelled at him to get him out of bed at 5 a.m.," Pinto said. "I'm the first to admit that I'm one of the parents who doesn't deal very well with this."

Ashley's mother, Irene Fuselier, said Monday she's done some yelling of her own, usually after discovering her daughter still in dreamland at 6:20 a.m. with her first class just 40 minutes away.

"She's out cold, I'm screeching 'Ashley!"' Fuselier said. "It's not a pretty sight."

Ashley admitted she has been late to school several times because she overslept, and just last week she caught herself dozing off at the end of her third-period Spanish class.

"I was sort of embarrassed," Ashley said.