Gang,
I have also uploaded the most recent video, with the current petiton link here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35jHiJ-5E1o

I have signed and I am so for this! My kids walk around like zombies and then sleep away the weekend, what kind of life is this that we currently call the teen years?

Thanks for your support Beth. You are so right. Many kids are "coping" by either missing their first period classes, taking a nap after school or drinking energy drinks, popping Advils, and/or coffee to be able to stay awake. Clearly, allowing kids to sleep when their bodies tell them they should, fixes all these issues and more.

Plans are in the works to deliver the "start school later" petition (http://bit.ly/tWa4dS) to DC on March 7 to "wake up" Washington to the problem of teen sleep and early school start times. We need 1250 more signatures to hit our goal of 5000, so even if you've already signed, don't forget to get spouses, parents, uncles, aunts, neighbors, friends, & co-workers to sign if they want to help bring this idea to national attention. As Maribel said, anyone 13 or older with an email address can sign.

interesting that you are drawing a parallel to suicide, many years ago I was working third shift and I can remember getting kind of psychotic after several days of a neighbor roofing his house. I already signed the petition but I really hate the early start time, My son is now a freshman in college and while he doesnt love 8:00 classes he is doing a lot better sleep wise, My daughter is not functioning really well with the early start, especially in the winter

Chet, thank you for your comment. I can personally attest that when my kids were newborns and I attempted to cope with sleep deprivation, it only took a few sleepless nights to start feeling like my world was crashing in. My judgement was impaired, I took to fits of crying and felt anxious and depressed. When I got a chance to crash, the feelings of hopelessness were miraculously lifted or at least abated until the next go round.

It's a no-brainer, and yet, we ask our children to face sleep deprivation every school day and cope with the multiple demands on their time in a day that starts too early and ends too late.

I'm happy to report that MoveOn (our petition's sponsor) issued a response to Terra when she asked them to reach out to the petition signer that expressed suicidal thoughts and gave him resources to help him. We could not contact him personally due to confidentiality and privacy protocols with petition signers, but StartSchoolLater.net is thrilled to be part of the solution in helping save a life.

If you start schools later what do you do about school sports, after school clubs, church groups, boyscouts/girlscouts and so on. I'm for kids getting more sleep, and when I was in Highschool on nights I would get home from practice at 6 or so, eat/do home work and be in bed by 8pm. I think in middle school I was in bed around 8 or 9 as well. Some nights I had meetings at church until 9pm, if we had a track meet I may not get home until 10pm or 11pm. Kids working on school plays often don't get home until late. This doesn't even consider those kids who work to help out the family or to put money into their own pockets.

I now work for the schools and often hear how my students don't go to bed until 12 or later each night. Sure, chalk some of it up to bad parents, but Zombie children are still going to be up till all hours if allowed to be. If I could choose to talk online or outside with my friends I will until everyone passes out, sure I will. If I'm not stopped until 1am then who cares, i can sleep through school! I started a 7:17 and wasn't happy about it, but I was happy about all my extra curriculars and afternoon time to enjoy the day. My folks were school teachers and made me be in bed by 10pm on school nights. They also woke me up at 8am on weekends. Learning to cope with our brave new world seems better then blaming it. Early bird get the worm and early bed early to rise aren't just fun sayings.

DioDingo, I can certainly appreciate your observations and it is up to the parents to set the tone with good sleeping habits. However, a few important factors must be considered when addressing the problem of early school starts.

First, the issue of early school start times is a relatively recent phenomenon. In the 1960's, most schools started at 8:30am. It was in the 1970's, as the push for saving transportation costs that school start times were staggered so that schools could utilize fewer buses and drivers. While this may have saved transportation costs in the beginning, there are clear effects that have surfaced since the 1990's with sleep study research that indicate that the health of teens is suffering with the current schedule. (see http://www.apa.org/monitor/oct01/sleepteen.aspx)

(...just continuing my previous post....)
As a result of the creeping school starts, everyone adjusted their schedules with regard to sports, work, extracurricular activities to start earlier. So, we could question how people will adjust, but the fact is that people already adjusted to earlier starts, when it was a series of changes that was implemented across the board without collaboration or input from any other community group needing to adjust to the change.

The argument that kids will just stay up later with later school starts has not come to pass in studies of students who have had their schools shift to later start times. Three studies, conducted in 2007, 2008 and 2009, found that students got more sleep because they went to bed at or near the same time each night and were able to rise later with the later school start times. Full citations and a discussion of this topic are available at http://schoolstarttime.org/delaying-school-start-times/will-students-squander-opportunity-extra-sleep/.

Finally, to elaborate on the early to bed, early to rise theory, or the "farmer argument", the human body can adapt and endure many things. However, just because a body is functioning during early morning hours now does not mean that it does not have any adverse effects.

The fact that today's farmers still have a life expectancy of 49 attests to this fact. (see http://www.ufw.org/_page.php?menu=research&inc=history/12.html)

For more information on common myths and misconceptions to starting school later, visit: http://www.startschoollater.net/myths-and-misconceptions.html

Thanks for the cogent response, Maribel! DioDingo raises some good points -- we all want our kids to be able to participate in after-school activities, have a part-time job if they want/need one, etc. But history shows that teens have been able to do those things quite well, with a start time of 8 am or later. And I like the idea that teens are accounted for in the early afternoon hours, when risky behaviors occur.

Lets try to keep things from biased sources out of the discussion. I found the information from the APA to be very useful. I remember hearing for years about how elementary schools should be the earliest to start and high school later. As a student in High school I found it compelling but again i enjoyed my afternoons. When I wrote my first response I was thinking of moving more on the year-round school idea to day round school. There are some children that would be fine coming to school at 5pm and getting out a bit after midnight. We would need a separate set of teachers/admin/buses but those students would have the choice to not participate in the social aspects of school and be able to truly focus. I agree that it would be better for students in or around puberty to start later for their educational growth.

How do we manage it? You mentioned the cost of busing children was a driving factor to earlier start times. We could get parents to drive their kids to school each day or car pool. I've thought the bus radius to a school needed to extended to at least 1.5 miles for high schools if not a full 2 miles. That would limit the number of buses needed. More, smaller schools could help. That would help in a number of ways from over crowding and behavior to later start times and more competition between schools.
Later times are good, but we need to fix, or aleast not exacerbate other problem.

As a high schooler and national level athlete, I learned discipline in school and in my after-school activities. Yes, you do have to fit in the things that you do. If my school started an hour later, my 5 hour practice would be later, homework would be later, and eating would be later....as well as my bed time. I probably would get up early to finish the homework that I didn't get done the night before (as many times I did) or to go to some kind of before-school function - because you know they would have them. I would have gotten the same amount of sleep, regardless of what time my morning started. Especially in high school, when you're competing against your neighbor, trying to get into the best school you can, and make the honor roll, you need as much time in the day as you can get. Just an opinion from a former student.