Monday, April 04, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Students run out of time

Lawmaker says early school days cutting short children's sleep

Freshman Paul Martin Guerrero joins other students outside Rancho High School last week, talking about the pre-dawn routine he goes through before coming to school. A bill is in a legislative committee to push back school starting times. Photo by Gary Thompson.

Paul Martin Guerrero often wakes up long before the crack of dawn so he can be on time for his first class at Rancho High School.

The freshman said he typically begins his day at 3 a.m. and does some homework. Then he catches a bus shortly before 5 a.m. and arrives at Rancho about 90 minutes later.

Guerrero is among about 1,000 students at Rancho who participate in two magnet programs requiring "early bird" classes beginning at about 7 a.m.

He said it took some time to adjust to his pre-dawn routine.

"At the beginning, I would sometimes rush and miss the bus," Guerrero said. "But by the middle of the year, I was used to it."

Guerrero said it's common for some of his classmates in early classes to doze off or not be attentive.

"Everybody is finally awake around 10 a.m."

It's standard in Clark County for classes to start before 8 a.m. Most high schools begin between 6:50 and 7:05 a.m.

But the question of how productive students are in these early hours has Sen. Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, pushing the district to begin high school classes about an hour later.

"All other districts are doing this" without the necessity of a law, he said.

Beers' Senate Bill 212 is sitting in the Senate Human Resources Committee. Senators have until April 15 to move the proposal out of committee for it to have any chance of becoming law.

Beers contends that all 16 other districts in the state begin classes no earlier than 7:45 a.m., and he can't understand why Clark County lags behind.

Clark County Superintendent Carlos Garcia said the answer is simple: The other districts don't have to transport more than 144,000 students every day.

"Every school should start between 8 and 9 a.m. That would be perfect," Garcia said. "But financially, unless you have more school buses, how do you get everybody where they need to be in time?"

The district operates about 1,200 buses, Garcia said. The transportation system is designed so that buses pick up students in three intervals about an hour apart. Buses first pick up high school, then middle school and then elementary students.

Beers said his bill should not have any fiscal impact on Clark County.

Craig Kadlub, director of government affairs with the district, said if high schools change starting times, all schools in the district would have to follow suit in order for the district to utilize its fleet of buses.

If only the high school starting times change, Kadlub said, the district would have to shoulder about $100 million in transportation costs, requiring about 440 new buses, construction of a $33 million bus yard and $15 million to hire additional drivers.

The district already has begun to get the word out on different starting times that might be implemented for schools beginning in August.

An e-mail circulated to district officials as well as parents and community groups outlined five different plans, ranging from pushing all starting times back an hour -- meaning high schools would begin about 8 a.m., middle schools at 9 a.m. and elementary schools at 10 a.m. -- to a plan in which high schools begin at 10 a.m. and middle schools begin at 8 a.m.

With factors such as extracurricular activities, students working part time and students who must baby-sit siblings after school, there has not been any consensus on backing a particular plan, district officials said.

"The public needs to understand that someone is going to be the group going to school early," Garcia said. "There is no simple solution."

Bill Speer, co-director for the center of math and science education at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said numerous studies indicate high school students benefit from later starting times.

He said teenagers, particularly high school students, need more sleep than any other age group other than infants.

Speer teaches his students, who want to be math teachers, that the optimal learning time is between 10 a.m. and noon.

Garcia doesn't dispute results of the studies. However, high school students were designated as the early starters because of safety reasons, he said.

Garcia said he wouldn't want elementary and middle school students standing in the pre-dawn darkness, or have elementary students get out of school during the winter darkness.

Some teachers at Rancho have seen the benefits of teaching classes later in the day.

"My second-hour class comes in here and they're bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and ready to go to work," said math teacher Larry Etnire. "But some of these kids have been here for two hours already."