Press Release November 19, 2012

Three grassroots groups in the DC Metro
area—the Montgomery and Anne Arundel chapters of Start School Later (SSL) and
SLEEP in Fairfax—are joining forces to push area school systems to provide
later morning start times for high school students.  All three groups are circulating online petitions asking local school boards to push back bell times to better meet the sleep, health, safety, and learning needs of adolescents.

Petition signatures in the three local
areas have passed 20,000. The Montgomery
County Start School Later petition has garnered over
9,000 signatures in the past month, Anne
Arundel’s petition has 1,874 signatures, and SLEEP in Fairfax has
9,158.

Convinced by the research and buoyed by
each other’s efforts, local advocates are united by a common vision and are learning
from other counties like Arlington and Loudoun, VA, that have successfully shifted
schedules. The school board in Fairfax, VA, recently set a goal to start high
schools after 8 a.m., but no changes have been implemented.

“We all believe this is a critical public
health problem. By working together, we can combine volunteer resources to
press more effectively for start times that are more appropriate for adolescents,”
noted Kari Oakes, PA-C, co-founder of SSL-Anne Arundel and Research Director at
SSL, a physician assistant with many years of experience working with
adolescents and young adults.

“Even
when I do manage to get my work done early, I just can't close my eyes until
11:30,” wrote a high school student from Annapolis, MD, on the Anne Arundel
petition. “My doctor told me to take melatonin if I was having that much
trouble falling asleep earlier. I'm not alone in this, as my friends have been
told and have tried to do the same. It doesn't really help. School has stopped
being fun and has instead become one the biggest stressors in my life.”

Today’s very early high school start times—7:17, 7:20, and
7:25 a.m., in Anne Arundel, Fairfax, and Montgomery county high schools
respectively—necessitate rise times between 5 and 6 a.m., since buses begin picking
up students as early as 5:45 a.m. These hours are incompatible with known sleep patterns of teenagers, most of whom need about 9 hours of
sleep a night. Physiology limits their ability to fall asleep much before 11 p.m.,
regardless of homework and extracurricular demands or electronic distractions.
Shifted body clocks mean that waking teens at 6 a.m. is like waking adults at 3
a.m. and is akin to shift work.

“Sleep deprivation, with such health
consequences as depression, suicide, car crashes, and increased risk of other
injuries, should be treated like hunger,” said Mandi Mader, LCSW-C, founder of
SSL Montgomery County.  “We don’t expect
children to learn without food and we shouldn’t expect them to learn without
sleep.”

“Research is
on the side of the advocates,” added Phyllis Payne, MPH, co-founder of SLEEP in Fairfax.  “Numerous studies show that high schoolers
with later morning start times not only have improved moods and school
performance, but also more sleep each night than those in schools with very
early schedules.”

“Cost is an
oft-cited reason that school systems use to avoid changing school schedules,
but many schools have now returned to more traditional school hours (closer to
8:30 or 9:00 for high schools) without adding buses or increasing the
transportation budget.” said Start School
Later’s co-director,
Terra Ziporyn Snider, PhD, a medical writer and historian. "Creative
solutions can be found when schools prioritize health, safety, equity, and
learning."

www.startschoollater.net