National Petition Started for Later High School Start Time

Here is an update of a story Patch posted earlier about

American children do not get enough sleep, according  to the National Sleep Foundation. Teenagers in particular need sleep; lots of it, according  to the medical research.  The problem is their bodies don’t always  want to hit the sack early,  making it difficult to rise in the morning.  This leads to early morning  high school classes with bobble-head  students nodding in and out of a  snooze. Part of the problem is many high school have an early  start  time which can be pushed to even earlier if the student is taking a  class before first period.

That may be changing if a new national petition gets enough   signatures to make lawmakers pay attention to the issue. Spearheaded by   Terra Snider, a medical writer and mom of teenagers, the petition needs   1,000 signatures to be delivered to legislators in Washington D.C.,  currently there are 953, according to Snider.

Snider said she began her campaign for a later start time in her home    county in Maryland more than a decade ago, with little luck.

“I eventually gave up my personal battle as I came to understand that    every time the issue is raised locally, the result is raging    controversy --and, almost inevitably, politics, money, and myth win out    over children's best interests,” Snider wrote in an e-mail to  Patch.  

She’s now taken the issue to the Internet in the hopes that it  will   gain national attention.

Snider, of Severna Park, wrote to her local contributes to "student  performance, truancy, and absenteeism, as well   as depression,  mood  swings, impulse control, tobacco and alcohol  use,  impaired  cognitive  function and decision-making, obesity,  stimulant  abuse,  automobile  accidents and suicide."

She started a  petition on the White House's We the People website last month to drum  up support for legislation regarding school start times, but fell short  before the deadline.

At Enumclaw High School, Zero Hour starts at 6:59 a.m., and first period at 8 a.m., which is before sunrise at this time of year.

Evidence has been mounting that students function better in school  with later start times since a landmark study out of  the University of Minnesota in 2002. The study (see PDF) showed  students did significantly better when school began after 8 a.m. A more  recent study  from the Brookings Institute confirmed those findings showing that  students who had early start times performed worse  throughout the say  than their peers who started school later in the  morning.

To  read or sign the petition, click here.