Superintendent’s Message

Beauty Sleep and High Schoolers

For decades, we have listened to the argument that high school students need a later start time for school. We have been told that they simply do not begin functioning until later in the morning. Many districts have adjusted start times in hopes of improving student attendance, decreasing tardiness, achieving better grades, staying awake in class and especially, reducing motor vehicle crashes.

We have learned that teenagers need at least 8 hours of sleep per night and younger students need at least 9 hours. The simple answer is to make our children go to bed earlier, but really, it's not that easy. Students are often engaged in school activities or have work requirements late into the evening. In addition, a teenager's body simply takes time to shut down at night. According to the Center for Disease Control, adolescents who do not get enough sleep are more likely to be overweight, to not get enough physical activity, to suffer from depression, to engage in unhealthy risk behaviors, and to perform poorly academically.

So if the recommended start time is 8:30 a.m. or later, why are only 1 in 5 secondary schools moving that way? Primarily, a later start time would have an impact on the schedules of working families. Many of us have grown accustomed to a universal 8:00 a.m. start. We can drop our children off 15-20 minutes before then and still be on time for our job responsibilities. Another concern for a later start time would be pushing our afternoon events back later. Currently at BHP, we have almost 600 of our students participating in at least one after school activity. Some of these functions last into late afternoon or early evening. 30 more minutes may not seem like much up front but it would extend events later into the night. Having to adjust work schedules for our numerous students who have job responsibilities after school could become an issue as well.

I think we can all agree that our teenagers need more sleep and need to be energized to start the day off on the right foot. Whether the solution is a later starting time or getting them to bed sooner will continue to be an argument. Regardless, they are still teenagers and teenagers still need their beauty sleep!

Dr. Richard Rosenberger

Mission & Vision