So much of the discussion around how to improve educational outcomes for students centers around what happens in the classroom: what students are being taught, how they’re being tested, and what the school environment looks like. But a large and growing body of research shows that how students start their day, before they even leave their homes, has major implications for how they’ll perform in school.

That point is being stressed in a report published this month by the Abell Foundation, a prominent Baltimore philanthropy, which is raising the alarm about the Baltimore City Public School System’s decision in 2022 to schedule school start times earlier in the morning, as early as 7:30 a.m. in some schools. Last school year, the report says, 81% of Baltimore City high schools started before 8:30 a.m.

According to the foundation’s analysis, authored by more than half a dozen professors and public health researchers, this policy change for Baltimore City students, who already weren’t getting enough sleep, was exactly what they didn’t need. Earlier school start times mean earlier wake-up times and less sleep for many students; and even those who adjust their bedtimes get poorer quality sleep, the report says, because adolescents’ natural sleep cycles are later than those of adults.

The amount and quality of students’ sleep have dramatic effects on how they go through their day, including in school.

“Healthy sleep is essential for adolescent brain functioning and behavior across several areas, including emotion regulation, learning and memory, intellectual abilities, reward and motivation, and impulse control,” the Abell Foundation says. Students with earlier school start times have more “absences, tardies, discipline challenges, symptoms of depression and anxiety, substance misuse, and even automobile crashes.”

These challenges are especially harmful for Baltimore City students, who already disproportionately face disadvantages from poverty, exposure to crime and other socioeconomic stressors that make it harder to succeed in school.

The Abell report’s authors spoke to recent graduates of Baltimore City College high school — where start times shifted from 7:45 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. — who said under the new regime most students were “barely making it to school on time” and described increased tardiness and sleepy students in class.

It should have been no surprise, even to non-experts, that many of these students would lose sleep and have a harder time in school because of this schedule shift. Indeed, as soon as Baltimore City Public Schools revealed its new schedules, there were many voices warning that earlier start times would come at the cost of students’ needed sleep.

So why did the school system move to earlier start times? The district cited the nationwide school bus driver shortage, arguing that it was necessary to shift start times in order to maximize the number of schools each bus can serve. It’s hard to place blame on the district for decisions that were forced by logistical and structural limitations. But as the Abell Foundation points out, few Baltimore City students — 7% district-wide — rely on district-provided school buses to get to school, and the rate is far lower in middle and high schools. The majority rely on public transportation (which has problems of its own that make it harder for students who need bus transfers to get to school on time).

It’s not to say that reliable and efficient transportation for the few students who do rely on school buses, most of whom have special needs, is unimportant. But it’s an indictment of the public education system offered to Baltimore City residents that so many students are forced to wake up so early, with their educational fulfillment suffering as a result, because of logistical challenges to a mode of transportation that the district generally doesn’t depend upon.

Baltimore City Public Schools has many needs and funding challenges to address, but the district doesn’t seem particularly concerned with finding expeditious solutions to return school schedules to their later start times. There’s debate over the ideal time to require students to be in class — the Abell Foundation report recommends no earlier than 8:30 a.m. But we should all agree that we should do whatever we can to spare students a 7:30 a.m. start time. Students across the country, especially in Baltimore City, already have enough on their plate.