AUGUSTA, Maine - A Maine lawmaker says high school students in the state ought to be able to get a little more sleep. Mattie Daughtry, a Brunswick Democrat, is sponsoring a bill that would set an 8:30 a.m. start time for high schools in Maine.
Researchers in the fields of education and health have long argued that later start times are more in sync with adolescents biological clocks. Opponents, though, say forcing schools to make this change would scramble schedules for bus transportation and extra-curricular activities.
At 28, Rep. Mattie Daughtry is one of the younger state lawmakers in Augusta. Ten years ago, Daughtry, a Brunswick Democrat, was a senior in high school and she was tired. Really tired. "I'm talking about that painfully sluggish feeling where it seems like everyday activities are a strain."
For four years, Daughtry testified this week to members of the Legislature's Education and Cultural Affairs Committee, she struggled to get out of bed and make it to Brunswick High School for the 7:55 a.m. bell.
"I was severely sleep deprived, and I'm saying that as a politician," Daughtry said. "In fact, I was so sleep deprived that, when I was asked to write down my senior goal for our yearbook, I wrote, 'To catch up on four years of lost sleep.' "
Last summer, the American Academy of Pediatrics updated research, first published in 2005, on excessive sleepiness in adolescents. Surveys, cited in the report, noted that 87 percent of high school students in the U.S. get less than the recommended 8.5 to 9.5 hours of sleep a night.
Aiden Regan is one of them. He's a junior at Greeley High School in Cumberland. Regan says he gets to school at 7:25. He gets home a little after 5, after track practice. "After eating dinner and working out, homework can take up to a few hours to do. Most of the time, I'll end up falling asleep sometime from 11:30 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. That's six to six-and-a-half hours of sleep."
In its report, the Academy of Pediatrics also cited research showing that sleep deprivation in adolescents harms mental and physical health and causes a range of problems in school, including lower academic performance, poor attendance and increased dropout rates.
To combat the problem, the report called for high schools nationwide to begin the school day no earlier than 8:30 a.m. A bill, proposed by Mattie Daughtry, would require Maine high schools to adopt this later start time.
"So why should we, as a state and as policymakers, make sure that schools are not starting before 8:30 a.m.? Because this is the one of the most pressing and easily fixable public health issues in our country," she said.
Forty percent of all U.S. high school students, the academy notes, start classes before 8:00 a.m., while just 15 percent begin after 8:30. In Maine, a handful of high schools begin as early as 7:30.
State education officials, though, say implementing a later start time wouldn't be as simple as supporters suggest. Jaci Holmes is with the Maine Department of Education. She says moving to a later start time would complicate schools and districts ability to develop schedules for transportation.
"Meeting the requirements of this bill could force districts to acquire additional buses, creating additional financial burden," Holmes said.
Holmes also worries about the bill's requirement that students have 11 hours of uninterrupted time between the end of school related activities and the beginning of the next school day. "Evening activities, such as theater or choral performances, might fall beyond the required consecutive hours of uninterrupted time, the 11 hours."
Mattie Daughtry, the bill's sponsor, acknowledges that the measure would force schools to rethink how they schedule extracurricular activities and athletics. But she says that should not be used as an excuse to resist a change that's supported by so much research.
The Legislature's Education and Cultural Affairs committee will work on the bill in the coming weeks.