By Marissa Cevallos | San Jose Mercury News
02/04/2010 -- When Glorianna Klyce's radio blasts hip-hop at 5:45 a.m., the 17-year-old rolls over and hits snooze. If it weren't for the second alarm clock that goes off at 6, she might have a much harder time getting to Kennedy High School in Fremont for the 7:35 a.m. first block bell.
When she's running late, she skips breakfast and doesn't do her hair. "I wouldn't care what color socks I pick out," said Klyce. "Yesterday, I wore cat stripes on one foot and pink flowers on the other."
She's not the only 17-year-old struggling to get to class. Emerging research shows that puberty upends sleep cycles, making snoozing into the late hours as natural for teens as hairy armpits and embarrassing voice squeaks. When teens hit puberty, their internal circadian clocks wind forward 1-3 hours, meaning they need 9 hours of sleep on average, a couple more hours than their younger siblings.
Now a growing number of schools are pushing back the morning bell so class times and students' energy are better aligned.
Last month, the Sequoia Union school board in southern San Mateo County voted for its high schools to start no earlier than 8:30 a.m.. New Haven Unified in Alameda County pushed back its start to 8:40 in 2007 and has seen about one percent fewer absences in its 4000 student school. In the Fremont school district officials are surveying students and parents on whether to start later than the current 7:35 start time. And in Santa Clara County the bells still toll at the same times.
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"The good side is, students are more awake," says principal Amy McNamara of Logan High in New Haven. But a few parents complain that sports and extra-curriculars can spill into dinner time, and in the winter, into the dark. "That is a concern," she says. "It's not perfect, but you can't please everybody."
Sleep research
Proponents of accommodating the pubescent sleep cycle cite research that teens perform better on tests, get in fewer car crashes, and enjoy more shut-eye when allowed to function on their natural biological clock.
"Momentum is building," said Shannon Sullivan, a pediatric sleep specialist at Stanford Sleep Medicine Center who sees sleep deprived teens every week. In 2005, almost one-fifth of schools nationwide had considered chiming the start bell later in the morning
"Often times, there aren't enough hours in the evening for students to get sleep, said principal Sandra Prairie at Mission San Jose in Fremont. "I'm definitely in support of a later start time."
It sounds obvious: students don't test well at the crack of dawn. In one Illinois study, every high school senior performed better when tests were given in the afternoon than the morning. But most standardized tests, like the SAT, start at 8 a.m.
"Their brains just aren't awake then," said Sullivan. "Young people are so horrifically sleep-deprived."
Teens don't necessarily stay up later when school starts later. In studies in Kentucky and Minnesota, when schools pushed the bell by an hour, high school students slept an extra 30 minutes per night.
More sleep means fewer drowsy drivers, suggests another study. Car crashes dropped 16.5 percent among 17 and 18 year olds in a Kansas county after schools there moved their start times forward by one hour. The rest of the state saw a 7.8 percent increase in car crashes. Most teen deaths are in car crashes, and about a fifth of auto accidents can be traced to drowsiness.
Some challenges
Not everyone is pushing back the clock. Shifting the school day would cause chaos at San Jose Unified, because the large school district would need to reschedule buses for 40 schools. Officials fear that after-school activities, sports, and jobs will suffer, according to Karen Fuqua of the San Jose Unified School District.
If Fremont schools start an hour later next year, Silvia Amico will have to find a carpool for her freshman son so she can be on time for her teaching job in San Jose.
"I can't show up to work late," said Amico. School buses don't run in every district, and carpools are hard to find in Fremont, where Amico says the community isn't tight-knit, and not all of the A/C bus stops are safe.
Some Fremont teachers doubt the extra hour will be useful. John F. Kennedy High School in Fremont already starts school an hour later on Wednesdays, but anecdotally, teachers haven't seen a drop in tardies.
"I don't think it would help," said Sharon Kinkler, who teaches 11th grade history and who has taught in the Fremont district for 30 years. "Wednesday's attendance isn't any better. Just as many students come in tardy."
But Kennedy and Washington, which both start one hour later once a week, aren't great test cases, says Fremont school board president Lara York, because they don't address the mounting sleep debt that teens accrue the rest of the week before crashing on the weekend.
Kennedy senior Andrew Vardas admits he occasionally spaces out in his morning classes. Cross country or swimming has him sweating until 5 or 6 p.m., and then he has homework in his AP classes before hitting the sack at 11 p.m. He has a love-hate relationship with his 6 a.m. alarm.
"Sometimes I'll switch off my alarm clock and be late for school," said Vardas. Or one morning, he was still snoozing while his friends were piling into buses to Sacramento.
"I was the only one to miss the field trip to our state's capital," said Vardas.
Vardas is all in favor for moving the school bell forward. But not every student minds the morning alarm ordeal — even the sleep-challenged Glorianna Klyce, who takes cat naps in the afternoon, wouldn't want a change.
"I like getting out earlier," she confessed.
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