As expected, Florida’s governor signed a recent bill that repeals a 2023 bill that would have required all districts to start high schools no earlier than 8:30 AM and middle schools no earlier than 8:00 AM by 2026. Districts will have to report to the State Board of Education reasons they cannot adhere to those originally mandated times and document the processes they went through to study the matter.

All school districts wrestled with how to comply with the original bill, and with the pros and cons of later start times for the past two years. The issues they explored were more complex than those the proponents of later start times emphasized at the outset. Proponents in Florida and other states have based their arguments on one primary issue – that teens are unable to get to sleep early enough to get sufficient sleep with early start times. Insufficient sleep has been associated with poor cognitive and academic performance, emotion dysregulation, problems with weight control, and an increase in auto accidents. The most common assertion is that early start times are primarily responsible for adolescents not getting healthy levels of sleep. Some advocates refer to teen sleepiness as a public health crisis, and at least one prominent advocate has called early start times inhumane. Further, advocates have pointed to numerous research studies that they believe prove only benefits and no downsides to later start times.

So why did Florida reverse course? As districts across the country have discovered, changing start times is a complex matter, involving many aspects of schooling. Managing effects on transportation has been the biggest roadblock. The vast majority of U.S. districts provide free transportation and they typically have buses run two or three routes. Before the movement to start school later began, a typical pattern was to pick up and drop off older students first before going back to get younger students. With that arrangement, older students end the school day earlier, allowing time for after school jobs, athletics, band and other activities, and taking care of younger siblings until parents get off work. When the routes are reversed, younger students are often required to be at school very early and in some months wait for buses before or shortly after dawn. Younger children need even more sleep than adolescents, so earlier starts means earlier bedtimes, which most young children will resist. Some districts determined that there would be new expenses of more buses and drivers.

I think that there are two major reasons schools have chosen not to follow the recommendations of later school start time advocates. One is that the advocates focus on one benefit – healthier adolescent sleep. But schools must weigh that benefit against multiple factors and satisfy multiple groups of constituents – students, parents, teachers, administrators, school boards, city and county governments, bus drivers and their supervisors, coaches, band leaders, leaders of other after school activities, day care providers, and employers of students. The second major reason is that schools are already subject to many city, county, state, and federal regulations and they believe that in this case local districts should be free to study the start time issues and come to their own conclusion for what works best for all.

That is essentially what Florida has decided is best for their school districts. California is the only state where later starts are mandated by law, and even there some exceptions can be made for rural districts where longer bus rides are the norm. Thanks to the very successful efforts of the lobby Start School Later, a number of states have bills at various stages of implementation. Legislators in those states will undoubtedly learn about what happened in Florida and take that into consideration as their legislation progresses. The image I chose for this post shows a school bus with its STOP sign deployed. Will some state legislators choose to stop, or perhaps slow down their bills? Or will they consider the Florida case and proceed to push forward? What effect will it have on legislators in states where no bill has yet been proposed?