Plan for later school starts gets mixed grades

LOS ANGELES — California school kids could be getting more time to sleep.

That’s the idea behind a proposal that’s cruising through the state Legislature that, if approved, would prohibit middle schools and high schools from starting earlier than 8:30 a.m.

A final vote could come next month.

To supporters, a delayed start time would allow students to get more rest, which would lead to better performance in the classroom. But others predict the plan would disrupt families and cause more problems that it would solve.

Knikki Royster, a mother of two, that she starts work at 7:30 a.m., and the later schedule would mean her kids would be walking a mile to high school.

“I prefer to drop them off,” Royster told The Sacramento Bee Sunday.

“I want that supervision in the morning,” she added. “When you don’t allow parents to do their job, we start making systems that don’t work for parents and hurt the family.”

Meanwhile, the debate is playing out in school board meeting rooms around the state. Schools in Davis and Sacramento have already moved to the later start time.

The bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Anthony Portantino, told the newspaper that studies show kids are not getting enough sleep, hurting their grades.

The University of Minnesota’s Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement in 2014 sampled around 9,000 students across five school districts outside California. It found that students who sleep eight or more hours are less likely to have depression, fall asleep in class, drink caffeine or engage in dangerous behavior.