Parents need to convince Fremont school district to start classes later in morning

By Narges Novbakhtian

ON any given school day, teenagers in the Fremont Unified School District struggle to get out of bed by 6:30 a.m., after an average of about six to seven hours of sleep, so they can be in school by 7:30 a.m.

According to an article in New Scientist, dated September 2006, teens need an average of 91/2 to 10 hours sleep because of their growth spurt.

Insufficient sleep has been shown to cause difficulties in school, including disciplinary problems, poorer grades, sleepiness in class, poor concentration, anxiety, ADHD, and depression. Other studies show that sleep-deprived teens are more likely to smoke, be involved in a car accidents and have problems with obesity.

Mary Carskadon from Brown Medical School in Rhode Island states that half of teenagers display symptoms of narcolepsy — a major sleep disorder caused by a defective signaling pathway in the brain.

According to the U.S. National Sleep Foundation, close to half of 11- to 17-year-olds fall asleep in class, and more than 50 percent say they don't get enough sleep and feel tired during the day.

As they reach puberty, most teenagers become walking zombies because they are getting far too little sleep.

Recent research also has revealed an association between sleep deprivation and poorer grades.

So

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why are teens chronically sleep-deprived and suffer from a major sleep disorder?

Once again, scientific research shows that around the onset of puberty, there is a change in teens' brain circadian timing system — controlled mainly by melatonin — so teens are shifted forward, becoming evening-type people.

So adolescents are biologically driven to sleep longer and later than adults and young children do. They perform better in the afternoon or evening.

What can be done to alleviate this negative spiral of fatigue and sleepiness, unstable emotions, poor decision-making and risky behaviors?

In schools where classes started after 8:30 a.m., students reported getting more sleep on school nights, being less sleepy during the day, getting higher grades and experiencing fewer depressive feelings and behavior.

Adjusting school schedules could do more to improve education and reduce teen accidents and crime than many more expensive initiatives (American Psychological Association, October 2001).

Rather than trying to adjust teens biological clocks to fit into an arbitrarily chosen schedule, Fremont Unified School District should implement a new schedule, like New Haven Unified School District and many other school districts across the United States.

These early start times are just plain abusive.

With such a wealth of scientific evidence about the prevalence of teens' sleep deprivation and the risks it poses, we parents and our community leaders should become more involved in efforts to persuade our school district to push back high school starting times closer to 8:30 a.m.

Teens will have less unsupervised time at home or on the streets because they will be dismissed later.

Narges Novbakhtian has lived in Fremont since 1990. She has two teenage sons who have been attending school in the Fremont Unified School District since 1996.