Three North Hills school districts are considering a later start time for high school students, prompted by studies showing that teenagers who get more sleep are healthier and perform better in school.
North Allegheny, Hampton and Fox Chapel Area school districts are at different stages of the process. The North Allegheny School Board is set to vote Jan. 24 on whether to move the start time for the Intermediate High School and Senior High School from 7:25 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. The starting bell sounds at the district’s three middle schools at 8:10 a.m., and would move to 8 a.m. with the proposed change.
One of the biggest challenges to this move would be the cost and logistics of busing: whether the school district would have to add more buses to get students to school on time and whether middle and high school students would ride buses together, said Emily Schaffer, spokeswoman for the district.
The district includes Marshall, McCandless, Bradford Woods and Franklin Park.
North Allegheny conducted an online survey in November of parents, students and staff on student stress, which was completed by 50 percent of the staff and 25 percent of parents. Of those who responded to the survey, 80 percent of parents, 63 percent of students and 70 percent of staff said that high school should start later.
North Allegheny Superintendent Robert Scherrer said in December a reason to consider the late start is to alleviate stress for his district that he characterized as “high-performing” with “high-achieving students,” comparing it to schools in California’s Silicon Valley.
"They started to have some serious crises with some of their students — cases of depression, anxiety, suicide clusters," Mr. Scherrer said in December. "And we're kind of ripe for that [in North Allegheny]. We're trying to be a little forward thinking here and sort of own this."
Even if the school board approves the change, it would not be implemented right away.
“If the Board approves the recommended adjustment to the high school start times, the adjustment would not occur until the 2019-2020 school year,” Mr. Scherrer said in an emailed response. “This would give the District additional time to educate our community and rework our bus schedules.”
Not as far along as North Allegheny, Hampton is well into the research on later starts for high school students. Peter Franzen, an assistant professor of psychiatry at University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, will provide an overview of the research surrounding later school start times for adolescents.
The 45-minute presentation will take place at 7 p.m. on Jan. 22 in the Hampton High School auditorium and will be followed by a question and answer session.
“There does seem to be a groundswell of support for later school start times for middle and high school students, including in Western Pennsylvania, where a number of school districts are exploring the possibility of changing school start times,” said Dr. Franzen in an email. “This follows the recommendations made by the Centers for Disease Control, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and other professional organizations that have recommended later school start times as a matter of public health.” He cited over 400 schools across the country as having shifted middle and high schools to later start times.
The Fox Chapel Area School District is in the initial stages of research. Bonnie Berzonski, spokesperson for the school district said “it is too early to say what time our high schoolers would start, if we chose a later start time.”
Fox Chapel resident Elizabeth Rambeau founded the Western Pennsylvania chapter of Start School Later about a year ago.
“I’d been talking to people in my home district of Fox Chapel about the issue for a while and a few of us decided to start a chapter to be better able to advocate for change,” she said.
She moved here from Ithaca, N.Y., where her school district had implemented the change, and she saw the negative effects on her children having to start classes earlier in Fox Chapel, at 7:25 a.m.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the American Medical Association, have recommend that middle and high schools start class no earlier than 8:30 a.m. to allow students to get enough sleep.
Insufficient sleep in teens is associated with obesity, migraines and illness, and with health risk behaviors including smoking, drinking, stimulant abuse, physical fighting, physical inactivity, depression and suicidal tendencies, the Start School Later coalition reports.
The Start School Later movement has gained momentum locally with school districts like Quaker Valley pushing back the start time by 15 minutes for middle and high school students this year, from 7:45 to 8 a.m. as part of a “pilot program.” If all goes well, administrators may consider pushing start times back even further next year.
Of the many public high schools in the area, very few start at 8 a.m. or later. Quaker Valley joins Mt. Lebanon School District, whose high school students begin classes at 8 a.m.
Melissa McCart: mmccart@post-gazette.com
First Published: January 18, 2018, 8:42 p.m.