Two years ago, the Baltimore City Public School System shifted school start times, causing some high schools and combined elementary and middle schools to start earlier.

One senior at Digital Harbor High School, which has its first bell at 7:30 a.m., said recently that means waking up at 5 a.m.

“Some people have to get up really early and will be really tired,” she told The Baltimore Sun. But if their day started later, the student added, “we’re going to be getting out at … 3 or 4, and I don’t think anybody wants to do that.”

The question of how to help developing brains get the rest they need while balancing family schedules and activities has been debated for decades — especially since the 1990s, when research showed that adolescents experience a shift in their natural sleep cycles. The Baltimore-based Abell Foundation became the latest to weigh in this month when it released a report saying secondary schools in Baltimore City should start no earlier than 8:30 a.m.

Research shows that teens need eight to 10 hours of sleep per night, with an average of nine hours to promote optimal cognitive function and development, according to the report. However, in Baltimore, about 62% of middle schoolers and 81% of high schoolers are averaging less than eight hours of sleep on school nights.

The research isn’t “new news,” said Amy Wolfson, a psychology professor at Loyola University Maryland and co-author of the report who has studied adolescent sleep since the 1990s. It has long been understood that starting school before 8:30 a.m. for middle and high schools is too early, said Wolfson, who’s also on the board of directors for the national organization Start School Later.

“The reason that the Abell Foundation commissioned, or asked us, to do this report is … so that we can provide the best-case scenario for all youth in the city of Baltimore to be able to be in school, be healthy mentally, healthy cognitively and healthy physically and safe,” Wolfson said.

When transitioning to adolescence, teens experience changes to their circadian rhythms, or internal clocks, delaying when they feel ready to sleep or wake up, the report said. Early school start times, extracurricular activities before and after school, and screen time habits before bed all lead to chronic sleep insufficiency.

“When we talk about depriving kids of sleep, it’s like depriving them of food or depriving them of exercise,” said Terra Ziporyn, another co-author of the Abell report and co-founder of Start School Later. Adjusting school start times to match what’s age-appropriate can help with students’ academic performance, mental health and healthy impulse control, and it can lower incidents of misconduct, the report said.

Students are especially affected by sleep deprivation in Baltimore as many of them belong to sociodemographic groups that face disparities in social determinants of health, and environmental factors such as where one lives or works, which can be different due to racism and classism, according to the report.

“In Baltimore City, youth often find themselves sleeping in noisy city environments, sharing beds with multiple family members, and/or living with caregivers who work nights or multiple shifts that affect the family schedule and limit bedtime supervision,” the report said.

Many Baltimore students also take public transportation to schools, leading to long commute times. Because of this, the report urged most non-neighborhood high schools to start no earlier than 9 a.m., and for middle and high school students not to be required to begin their commutes before 7:30 a.m.

Some say later start times might solve one problem while creating others, however. Students with after-school jobs, for example, might be dismissed too late to work. Other concerns include whether older children with later school start times would be able to drop off or pick up elementary school-age siblings, and the difficulty of holding athletics practices later into the evening, interfering with family meals and available daylight during the winter months.

Whether it’s figuring out who will drive their children to school, after-school care or work schedules that cannot be changed, it’s important to find out what people’s exact concerns are when they have questions, said Kyla Wahlstrom, a faculty member at the University of Minnesota’s College of Education and Human Development who conducted some of the first research on later school start times.

“Those are all real problems that must be addressed,” said Wahlstrom, who is also a former classroom teacher and principal. “That’s where leadership and stakeholdership — people who are stakeholders — come together and they figure out, what can we do.”

Changing school start times can change a community’s rhythm, which can be difficult, but with “careful thinking, input and planning” from districts, students and families, many challenges have been accommodated in other regions, Wahlstrom said.

Anne Arundel County changed its school start times for the 2022-23 school year with middle schools starting at 9:15 a.m. and high schools starting at 8:30 a.m. In Howard County, changes that took effect last school year pushed high school start times back 35 minutes to 8 a.m. while middle schools start at 8:40 a.m. However, with the plans around the new school start times, a lack of communication and failure to fill positions to expand the school system’s transportation in time contributed to issues that left students without buses on the first day of school.

In response to the Abell report, the Baltimore City Public School System (BCPSS) said balancing student needs with the complications of getting students where they need to go with a unique transportation system is “a challenging endeavor with few simple or easy answers.”

BCPSS said in recent years, the district has optimized bell times, expanded the transportation fleet and bolstered operational efficiency while ensuring safe and equitable measures were taken to prioritize students with the greatest needs. When considering earlier start times, the school system said it must also factor in bus driver shortages, budget limitations and adjustments to the Maryland Transit Authority infrastructure that would be needed. Transportation is also complicated by the city’s choice-based secondary school system, which means students are often traveling greater distances to get to schools well outside their neighborhoods.

“The transportation logistics and costs are the primary drivers of our current school start times. We need to run detailed scenarios to understand the potential impacts better and identify feasible options for incremental changes within City Schools’ control without significantly disrupting transportation operations,” BCPSS said in response to the report.

There is a cost, but the value in changing school start times is “incredibly important” for students’ health and well-being, said state Del. April Miller, a Frederick County Republican who sponsored statewide legislation that would mandate 8 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. start times for middle and high schools, respectively, unless a waiver is granted. Billions of dollars are being spent on education reform through the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future to achieve the same outcomes that could be achieved from a later start time, Miller said.

“We constantly hear about mental health. We constantly hear about tardiness, we constantly hear about safety, well-being, health, all of those things, academic performance, accidents, right?” Miller said. “All of those things are positively impacted by having a later school start time.”

While states such as California and Florida passed similar legislation, Miller’s bill didn’t make it through Maryland’s most recent legislative session. The Abell report includes statewide legislation as a recommendation in addition to districtwide guardrails for start times in Baltimore City schools and community engagement on sleep health.

“One of the great things about this issue is it’s actually solvable, like we can do it and we can affect a huge number of people all at once,” Ziporyn said. “And so again, it’s low-hanging fruit, often overlooked.”

Have a news tip? Contact Kiersten Hacker at khacker@baltsun.com, 516-650-8635 or @KierstenHacker on X.