Matt Driscoll: Will high school start time ‘torrent’ reach Tacoma?

Like most Tacomans, I hate to give Seattle credit.

For anything.

Ever.

But as much as it pains me to admit it, I’m afraid Seattle Public Schools was on to something this week when its School Board voted 6-1 to push back start times for high school students.

Starting next year, Seattle’s public high schools will start at 8:45 a.m. The same goes for many of the district’s middle schools and some K-8 schools. To make the bus schedule work, most Seattle elementary schools will start earlier, at 7:55 a.m.

As The Seattle Times’ Paige Cornwell reported, “The changes are a culmination of a yearslong campaign by parents, teachers and sleep scientists, who advocated for changing school start times to better match teens’ biological clocks.”

Anyone who knows a teenager, or has been a teenager, knows this to be true. That’s one of the reasons the change was recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics and endorsed by the Seattle teachers union.

There’s plenty of research to back it up.

Along with the American Academy of Pediatrics, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this year warned that “most U.S. middle and high schools start the school day too early.” The declaration came after data published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report indicated that fewer than 1 in 5 middle and high schools in the country started the day at 8:30 a.m. or later during the 2011-2012 school year.

Adolescent students need about 8.5 to 9.5 hours of sleep a night, doctors have determined, and according to the 2013 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Report, two out of three fail to get it — a rate that has remained steady since 2007.

All of this raises the obvious academic performance concerns for high school students. But the CDC also warns that failing to get enough sleep can lead to teenagers being overweight, stressed out, and more prone to drinking, smoking and using drugs.

Seattle school officials think their move might encourage other districts to also pay attention to the research.

“This is a great win for our students,” Seattle School Board Vice President Sharon Peaslee told The Times. “We will unleash a torrent of public schools shifting to bell times that make sense for students.”

That torrent, however, has yet to reach the shores of Tacoma. District spokesman Dan Voelpel tells The News Tribune that, so far, there’s been no discussion of pushing back high school start times. The same goes for the Clover Park School District. And Puyallup. And Franklin Pierce.

To be fair, it’s not like it would be a simple switch.

In Tacoma, most high schools start at 7:30 a.m., most middle schools start at 8:15 a.m., and most elementary schools start at 9 a.m. Flipping that schedule on its head — which would likely be a necessity, given cost considerations and the need to stagger buses — would result in younger children starting school earlier, and, in turn, waiting for the bus earlier, sometimes in the dark. That prospect raises legitimate safety concerns.

There’s also the matter of getting sign-off from the teachers union. In Seattle, the union strongly backed the push for later start times for high school students. Could the same thing happen here? While noting that she can’t speak for all rank-and-file members, Tacoma Education Association President Angel Morton tells me, “It’s something we would be happy to talk about here.”

“Obviously, most teachers want to do what’s going to be best for students,” she says.

There are definitely educators in the area who like the idea.

Take Lincoln High School teacher Nathan Gibbs-Bowling. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because Gibbs-Bowling — who teaches Advanced Placement government and human geography — was recently named Washington’s 2016 teacher of the year. He’s pretty invested.

“I taught seniors first period once. Never again. They were the ‘Walking Dead’ the entire year, but especially during the winter,” Gibbs-Bowling continues. “During winter months, students show up to school when it’s dark and leave when it’s dark.”

He says that problem gets more pronounced if a student plays a sport or is part of an after-school club. “It’s depressing,” he says of the long, dark days.

Gibbs-Bowling tells me that early start times can be especially rough at a place like Lincoln, on Tacoma’s poorer and more ethnically diverse East Side. Out of necessity, he says, many of his students work late into the night after school, and this also takes a toll on their sleep, their studies and their health.

“It’s insanity that it has taken this long for this to become a thing,” Gibbs-Bowling says of the later start-time discussion. “But I am glad Seattle has gotten the ball rolling regionally.”

If Seattle has gotten the ball rolling on the issue, it will now take others — in places like Tacoma— to pick it up and run with it.

This story was originally published November 21, 2015 at 3:45 AM with the headline "Matt Driscoll: Will high school start time ‘torrent’ reach Tacoma?."