Battling alarming trend among teens: Lack of sleep

After a full day of classes, freshman basketball, drama club, then up to two hours of homework, Amalia Ben-Porath, 15, finally forces herself to go to bed at 10:30 p.m. but rarely falls asleep right away.

Even if she nodded off the minute her head hit the pillow she still faces a 6 a.m. wake-up in order to get to school by 7:30 a.m., leaving her with just 71/2 hours of sleep, at best.

"I'm fairly lucky, I get six to seven hours of sleep," said the Lower Merion High School freshman.

Her friends who go to bed later or rise earlier fall asleep in class and she worries what will happen as she and her sleep-deprived cohort start driving while drowsy.

She has reason to be afraid.

More than 85 percent of adolescents are getting fewer than the recommended 81/2 to 91/2 hours of sleep, according to the National Sleep Foundation, resulting in a generation of chronically sleep-deprived teens who are more at risk for suicide, driving accidents, depression, bad grades, obesity, drinking, and drug use.

Momentum is building nationally and locally for letting students hit the snooze button with about 1,000 schools in 70 districts pushing back start times. Gov. Christie has ordered state officials to study the feasibility of middle and high school students going to school later.

And in the Main Line's Lower Merion School District, parents and students have been pressing officials to join the later-is-better bandwagon. They are cosponsoring a Feb. 21 conference at Radnor Middle School on adolescent sleep and have collected 700 signatures on a petition requesting that high school start between 8:30 and 9 a.m.

"We don't anticipate it will happen this year, but there's a strong impetus toward this," said Harrison Meyer, 17, a senior and copresident of student government at Lower Merion High School. "The science backs this up."

In fact, in August the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention joined the American Academy of Pediatrics in calling for later school start times to improve adolescent health, academic performance and quality of life.

"Car accidents and suicide are the two biggest killers of teenagers, and both of those things are highly impacted upon by chronic sleep loss," said Judith Owens, director of sleep medicine at Boston Children's Hospital. She is coauthor of a 2014 AAP study recommending a first bell at 8:30 or later. She will be speaking at the Lower Merion conference.

"My 10th grader struggles to get up every morning," said Amy Norr, a leader of the Lower Merion movement, attending classes in a "drowsy, groggy state," as had two older siblings, now in college, where they get more sleep.

For many school administrators the logistical nightmare of rearranging school schedules is as welcome as homework over winter break. School officials say that they sympathize but that changing start times isn't as simple as pushing back the clock. It's a multilayered process that would require altering bus schedules and after-school activities.

West Chester Area School District Superintendent James Scanlon, who also will speak at the conference, said it would cost $36 million to reroute transportation for the district's 16 schools and 130 private, parochial and charters to which it buses students.

Like many districts, West Chester has multiple bus runs that start with high school students, then middle schoolers and finally elementary students.

Flipping the order so that elementary students get picked up first and high schoolers last would interfere with after-school sports and require athletes to leave school early, said Lower Merion superintendent Robert Copeland, who suggested that schools region-wide would need to collaborate on new schedules.

To Owens and others, the benefits outweigh the challenges. A 2014 University of Minnesota study of eight high schools in three states that delayed their opening bells found that attendance; standardized test scores, and academic performance in math, English, science, and social studies improved, while tardiness, substance abuse, and symptoms of depression decreased.

In addition, car crashes involving teen drivers dropped 70 percent at Jackson Hole High School in Wyoming, which had the latest start time, 8:55 a.m.

The CDC-funded study reported that in high schools starting at 8:55 a.m. two-thirds of students got eight or more hours of sleep. Schools that begin at 7:30 a.m. reported an average of only a third of students sleeping eight hours.

The CDC says evidence is clear that sleep deprivation poses health risks to millions of adolescents, noting in a 2013 study that youngsters who sleep six hours or fewer per night had a higher incidence of cognitive deficits. Adolescents form long-term memories during sleep, which improves in-class attention, academic performance and test results.

Parents like the later schedules, as well, according to another survey. Minneapolis School District pushed back the start of one high school to 8:30 and 92 percent of parents liked the change, reporting that their children "were easier to live with" and that families had "more conversation time," according to a report from the Education Commission of the States.

The latest school system to make a change was Seattle, which in November approved a start time of 8:45 at high schools and most middle schools.

"I don't disagree kids need more sleep, but I don't think that the reason they don't get more sleep is school starts at 7:30 a.m.," said West Chester's Scanlon.

Surely other factors likely are keeping kids from getting enough shut-eye, such as too many activities and using cellphones and computers before bedtime.

But experts say that adolescents' internal biological clock shifts to a later time, making it more difficult for them to fall asleep before 11 p.m. So even if they tried to get to bed earlier, they wouldn't be able to fall asleep.

Meyer said that he tries crawling into bed by 9 or 10 but that it can take an hour for him to doze off. Sometimes, though, "I'm overcome by exhaustion," he said. "There's rarely a time during the school year when I don't feel tired."

kboccella@phillynews.com

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@Kathy_Boccella

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the hospital where Judith Owens works.