• INFORMATIONAL BLURBS

    The following blurbs have appeared in the Council Rock Weekly News Update as a way to share quick and pertinent information about adolescent sleep habits and school start times with our community. 

    January 17, 2020: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that more than 90 percent of high school students in the United States get inadequate sleep. Adolescents require about 9 hours of sleep per night for optimal health. The typical adolescent in the United States gets only 6.75 hours of sleep on school nights.

    January 24, 2020: During puberty, adolescents are biologically programmed to fall asleep later at night (typically 11 p.m. or after, give or take) than children and adults are. Consequently, it is biologically normal ─ and necessary ─ that they rise later in the morning. Most sleep deprivation among middle and high school students is a product of their wake-up time, not their bedtime. (Reports and studies about sleep and sleep cycles, also known as “circadian rhythms,” are available online at StartSchoolLater.net.)

    February 21, 2020: 
    Benefits observed from later high school start times include:

    • Increased attendance rates
    • Decrease in disciplinary action
    • Decrease in student-involved car accidents
    • Increase in student GPA
    • Increase in state assessment scores
    • Increase in college admissions test scores
    • Increase in student attention
    • Decrease in student sleeping during instruction
    • Increase in quality of student-family interaction

    Source: "Later School Start Times Promote Adolescent Well-Being," a fact sheet from APA's Children, Youth, & Families Office.