Later start times at high schools studied

By Emily Richmond

Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2005 | 8:31 a.m.

If Green Valley High School freshman Carrie Yakubik had her way, she would have been curled up in her warm bed at 6:30 a.m. Monday, not making her way through the biting cold to gym class.

"I get really tired every day," said Yakubik, who rises at 5 a.m. to catch the bus to the Henderson campus on Arroyo Grande Parkway. "By last period, I'm totally exhausted."

With research consistently showing that teenagers are not getting enough quality z's -- and might perform better academically when they do -- school districts across the country are reconsidering class start times.

The Clark County School District, which has wrestled with the issue in the past, is currently studying whether later start times would benefit students. At its meeting Thursday, the Clark County School Board will discuss the results of a recent town hall meeting on the topic.

To move the high school start times later than the current 7 a.m., School District officials say they would need to do one of two things -- either revise elementary and middle school schedules or come up with the estimated $77 million needed to buy more buses.

With no extra cash on hand, programs and services in other areas would have to be cut to pay for additional bus service, said Agustin Orci, the district's interim co-superintendent.

Other districts' experiments with later class starting times have left the issue open to debate.

In 1997 the Minneapolis high school district moved its start time to 8:30 a.m. with dismissal at 3:20 p.m. A study four years later found that while attendance rates had improved, there were negligible gains in overall student achievement.

The study's lead investigator, Kyla Walstrom, notes that the biological clock of adolescents is unique. Regardless of bedtime, teens typically cannot move into the deepest and most critical sleep stage until after 11 p.m.

"Young children love getting up early and adults are able to adjust to shift work," said Walstrom, now interim director of the Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement at the University of Minnesota. "But the rhythm of the teenaged body, the teenaged brain, is not amenable to change."

School districts that have tried later start times often give up before the change has time to prove itself, Walstrom said. In one Kentucky school district, the change was deemed so disruptive that the plan was abandoned after only six weeks.

At least three years of data are needed to evaluate the effectiveness, Walstrom said.

One option for pushing back high school start times -- changing elementary and middle schools' schedules -- could cause more problems than it might solve, some say. Some parents worry about younger children being left unsupervised if their older siblings were no longer available to keep an eye on them at the end of the school day. A later start for elementary schools also could mean a dark walk home in winter months.

At the Nov. 19 town hall meeting, Carolyn Edwards, a member of the community group Nevadans for Quality Education, suggested the district transport middle and high school students on the same buses. While some additional buses still would have to be bought to accommodate later high school start times, fewer would be needed than if the high school routes were completely separate, Edwards said.

"The current start times are financially driven by the buses," said Edwards, who also is an appointed member of the committee that makes attendance zone boundary recommendations to the School Board. "It's not anybody's idea of what's best."

The Clark County School District provides transportation to students living at least two miles from their assigned campus. The district transports about 145,000 students daily using 1,100 buses.

Edwards suggested that high schools and middle schools start at 8 a.m. and the elementary schools continue with a 9 a.m. start.

"If we did that, then no one's walking in the dark," Edwards said.

Some parents, though, might have reservations about younger children riding with older students on the same buses, Edwards said.

"Can you see a sixth grader and a 12th grader on the same bus?" Edwards said. "Obviously, there would have to be a way to make it safe."

Green Valley High School is the district's only comprehensive urban high school that begins its regular schedule at 8 a.m. About 300 students such as Yakubik, who rely on bus transportation or participate in the school band, begin at 7 a.m. and finish at 1:16 p.m. The rest of the school's 2,700 students start at 8 a.m. and are dismissed at 2:16 p.m.

Response to the pilot program, which began about three years ago, has been "overwhelmingly positive," Green Valley High School Principal Jeff Horn said.

"The students get that extra hour of sleep and are more alert in their morning classes," Horn said.

But what has worked for Green Valley might not be applicable at many of the district's other high schools. The pilot program's success has depended on a large number of students either living within walking distance or having alternate transportation.

"We have a large number of parents willing to drive their kids to school so they can take advantage of the later start," Horn said.

Karen Valdez, who gave her daughter a lift to school Monday, said Green Valley's classes need to start "a whole lot later." Prying her daughter out of bed is a daily battle, Valdez said.

"There's no reason to start so early," Valdez said. "They need more time to get their homework done and more time to sleep."

Clutching a mug of hot chocolate with her dark curls still damp from the shower, sophomore Cori Valdez agreed with her mother.

"I try to go to bed real early, but sometimes I just lie there and can't fall asleep," Cori Valdez said.

But Ben Stangl, also a sophomore, said he prefers the 7 a.m. start time. Getting out of school at 1:16 p.m. gives him time to do homework before reporting to work as a glass installer.

Stangl said his schoolmates would likely stay up even later if they have an extra hour in the morning to get ready for school.

"They pretty much do that already," he said.

Green Valley's faculty and administration also are divided on the school time change idea. Algebra teacher Ron Smith estimated a quarter of his students hold after-school jobs that might be affected by a later start time. And having two separate schedules means administrators spend twice as much time on bus duty, Dean of Students Tricia Deley said.

Assemblyman Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, who proposed a bill during the 2005 Legislature that would have prohibited high schools from starting required classes before 8 a.m., said Monday he was glad that the School District is taking a closer look at start times.

"I can't imagine that it wouldn't have a very real, very positive impact on test performance, particularly on the proficiency exams," Beers said.

Emily Richmond can be reached at 259-8829 or at [email protected].