Key to learning ABCs: catching enough Zs?

"I thought it was going to screw up athletics," says Kier Palmer-Klein, a 2000 graduate of Southwest High School. "People were saying that we'd be running cross-country in the dark and finishing soccer games after dinner."

But that didn't happen, he says, "and then when I got an extra hour of sleep, I realized that starting later was a really good idea.... It made it a lot easier to actually get to class and do something."

To succeed, Minneapolis revamped its busing schedule. Elementary school students, who typically fall asleep earlier and wake before teens, took early busses and began school first. The district went from a three-tiered busing plan to a five-tiered system, accommodating a mélange of start times: 8:05, 8:40, 9:10, and 9:40.

But Ashley Lommers-Johnson remains unconvinced. He resents the decision process, which he sees as stacked against opponents, and he says 100 percent of the student senate voted against the late start.

"It's not a biological necessity," he says of reports that teenagers have different sleep needs from everyone else. "It's a choice those families make" when they let their kids stay up late.

Mr. Lommers-Johnson withdrew from Nathan Hale's Parent Teacher Student Association and site council over the issue.

"You don't go forward with such a radical proposal with the community as split as it is," he says.

Wahlstrom and Mary Carskadon, professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University and a leading sleep researcher, say those reservations are a prime reason more schools haven't instituted later starts: It's complex and threatening for communities to alter old rhythms.

"If schools don't do some education in advance of making this change, it can have negative outcomes," Dr. Carskadon says. "It just can get out of control unless there's some groundwork laid."

Since the Minnesota high schools shifted their schedules, academic performance has improved, if only slightly. Wahlstrom's studies have found that attendance is up and attrition down. "There is significantly less reported depression, fewer peer relationship problems, fewer fights with parents," she says.

And though critics warned that teens would simply stay up an hour later each night, nullifying the sleep gain, Wahlstrom's research found that Minneapolis teens were in fact getting about one extra hour of sleep nightly.

Over half of the district's high school teachers report that students are more alert during the first two class periods. And participation in athletics has remained the same.

At Nathan Hale, sophomore Alison Driver turns to deductive logic in considering the plan: "If your mind's not going to kick in till 8:45 and you're starting school at 7:45, well, you're screwed."

Page: 1 | 2