Barriers and Facilitating Factors in Delaying School Start Times

Abstract

The majority of adolescents in the United States do not obtain the recommended amount of sleep each night. While the reasons for this are multi-factorial, early school start times effect the amount of sleep an adolescent is able to achieve each night. Biological rhythms influence adolescents to stay up later and wake up later in the morning. School districts across the country are taking notice of adolescent sleep research and delaying their start times to better match adolescents' biological rhythms. However, the majority of the schools in the United States continue to start earlier than the recommended 8:30am start time, including the school district targeted in this project. The purpose of this project was to collect data from administrators whose schools had undergone a delay in school start time on the barriers and facilitating factors they found during the implementation. This information was then shared with the local school district.