New Jersey Considers Later School Start So Students Could Sleep And Function Better

New Jersey Department of Education officials completed a series of hearings on Tuesday to discuss if schools in the district should adopt a later start time. The three public forums came after the department agreed to consider the proposal last year.

The low attendance at the forum shows there is not a lot of opposition to the proposal, according to State Sen. Richard Codey (D), who spearheaded the effort. For example, only three people showed up in the first public forum.

Codey became interested in the proposal after the American Academy of Pediatric recommended that classes should not start before 8:30 a.m. Nearly 85 percent of schools based in New Jersey start classes earlier than the recommended time.

In more than 40 states, nearly 75 percent of publish schools start earlier than the recommended time. Only 17.7 percent of middle and high schools in the country follow the recommendation of the academy, according to the Huffington Post.

Residents of the state can go to the Department of Education website to express their comments on the issue until May 20. By then, the department will be deciding whether to authorize pilot programs that would require middle and highs schools to start at a later time.

New Jersey is only the second state to have legislation on the issue, according to Terra Ziporyn Snider, the executive director of Start School Later, a non-profit organization. Maryland was the first state to pass the bill to incentivize high schools that start at a later time.

Start School Later is an advocacy group with a mission to allow students more sleep by changing the time schools start daily, according to Parent Herald. Snider explains that sleep is essential especially for teens since they are growing and developing at a fast rate.

The problem with early school start is that some students are forced to wake up at 5 or 6 a.m. to make the long commute to school. Teens also tend to experience an epidemic of sleep disorders due to busy schedules.

However, pushing classes to a later school time does not assure that students will be getting more sleep. Some students end up going to bed at a later time, according to a study that experimented with delayed school start times.

The study also found that a later school start inconvenienced students with extracurricular activities such as sports. It also greatly affected kids with after-school jobs and parents who require childcare.