California Becomes First State To Go To Later School Start Times

GUILFORD, CT - While the Guilford school system has been an innovator when it comes to going to later school start times to give kids more sleep time, officials have maintained that its been difficult to do so since there is no one coordinated state strategy to tackle the issue.

One state - California - just became the first state in the nation to take the bold step of voting to go to later school start times statewide.

California will become the first state in the nation to mandate later start times at most middle and high schools under legislation Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law Sunday.

The approved legislation will take effect over a phased-in period, ultimately requiring public middle schools to begin classes at 8 a.m. or later while high schools will start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. The law does not apply to optional early classes known as “zero periods.”

The new start times will be implemented by the beginning of the 2022-23 school year, or when a school district’s three-year collective bargaining agreement with its employees ends, whichever is later. Districts that recently negotiated agreements or are in the midst of negotiating have the option of adjusting to the later times when their contracts end.

Back in Guilford, Board of Education Chairman William Bloss, who once called moving school start times the "most difficult issue" he's ever tackled, took notice of what went on in California, and commented.

"Uniform start times would help to solve some of the most vexing issues facing local school districts, including accommodating sports schedules that currently may differ between towns," Bloss said.

"We have generally been pleased with the modest adjustment we were able to make in Guilford," Bloss added.

Guilford changed its school start time schedule in 2018.

The high school has opened 15 minutes later at 7:40 a.m since that school year, and middle school 10 minutes later and elementary school five minutes later.

In Guilford, the system has been studying options to delay start times since 2014. In 2017, Freeman and the Board of Education convened a task force of administrators, school board members, teachers, parents, students, and medical professionals to make recommendations.

In its report, the task force said: "Sleep deprivation is a common problem in teenagers. Currently, fewer than 10 percent of teenagers in the United States are getting the recommended amount of sleep on weeknights, and the amount of sleep that teens get decreases as they proceed through high school."

The task force made several recommendations to minimize the impact of the time changes including consolidating bus routes to avoid increasing costs to the town and shortening the time between classes to avoid shorter class periods, among other steps.