One of the more fascinating—and infuriating—aspects of our work to get schools to start at sleep-friendly hours is that decisions about school hours are often made by people who may not care all that much about sleep. These are not bad or stupid people. They just have different interests and priorities. And efforts to persuade them to change those interests and priorities have led later start time advocates into dead-end efforts for decades.
Only recently did I come to understand that we were going about this all wrong. If we wanted schools to start at times that allowed for healthy sleep, our goal was not to change the interests of the decisionmakers. Rather it was to understand their interests and create conditions in which starting school later became one of them.
I don’t mean to imply taking mafia-esque or otherwise nefarious measures. I simply mean finding or working to create common or complementary interests where the people who set school policy stand to benefit from prioritizing adolescent sleep health. Of course, all that is easier said than done—much easier. But over the years I’ve seen many advocates do it and have increasingly come to understand how.
The Limits of Evidence
When we first started working to change school start times, we passionate advocates—whether we were parents, students, educators, sleep researchers, or healthcare professionals—assumed the evidence would speak for itself. Little did we know.
You’d think that having groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics, National PTA, and American Medical Association recommending change would be enough. You’d think scads of research showing active harm we are doing to kids—and the consistent, major, and immediate benefits of change—would be enough too. Alas, no. Many of us learned the hard way that when it comes to turning adolescent sleep science into school policy, no amount of evidence was sufficient.
We could show up at school board meetings and cite study after study, drop research tomes on legislators’ desks, and cite one policy recommendation after another. But more often than not, the response was, “Sure, we understand the science. But the problem is [childcare, afterschool sports, bus costs, teacher retention, traffic, student jobs…fill in the blank].” We could knock holes in every one of these ostensible problems. We could cite tons of evidence from schools that had actually moved start times that benefits far outweighed costs or concerns—when there were actual costs or concerns. But there was always something more. It was a multi-year game of whack-a-mole.
The real problem wasn’t sports or jobs or bus costs or any other issues of logistics or even finances. It was fear of change, failure of imagination, and low prioritization of sleep.
There was a reason we were playing whack-a-mole. That reason was that the real problem wasn’t sports or jobs or bus costs or any other issues of logistics or even finances. It was fear of change, failure of imagination, and low prioritization of sleep. The result? A lack of political will.
These real reasons for resistance helped explain why marching into school board rooms with a stack of research papers was pointless. While it sometimes led to sympathetic nods and even study groups and task forces, it rarely led to change.
Self-Interest as the Key
Early on, we did not understand the association between research and public opinion, behavior, and policy. That association is complicated and still incompletely understood, but it is already clear to both scholars and battered advocates like us that it has more to do with money, politics, and emotion than with science.
This is a conclusion by no means unique to school start times. Upton Sinclair, who wrote about the meatpacking industry back at the turn of the twentieth century, was well aware of the problem when he observed that “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” It doesn’t matter how strong your facts are, or how good your argument, if the person you’re trying to convince loses money, position, or self-respect by believing what you say.
That’s where self-interest comes in, and why it’s the key to getting sleep and circadian science translated into school policy.
Once we came to understand more about what might motivate a decisionmaker to support a later start time policy or law, we also came to understand we had been going about things all wrong. What had to change was not so much what we did as advocates, but rather the way we thought about what we do. We had to accept that our goal as advocates was not to show we were right. Our goal was to create conditions where it was in the interests of decisionmakers to do what was right.
We couldn’t create those conditions without understanding that many stakeholders affected by school start-time decisions have interests and responsibilities unrelated to sleep health, or even to student safety, mental health, or school performance. It’s not that they don’t care about these things. They very well may. It’s just that they have other priorities.
The Broad Reach of School Schedules
In the United States, for example, decisions about school hours are generally made by school board members and administrators whose positions depend on the opinion of numerous players within the school community (e.g., teacher unions, sports boosters, advocates for underserved populations), as well as the wider public. They must weigh school schedules as one of many negotiable school budget items including costs of transportation; attracting and retaining teachers and staff; improving grades, test scores, graduation, and attendance rates; and addressing opportunity gaps. While federal, state, or local regulations may require them to protect certain aspects of student health and safety (e.g., by removing asbestos, requiring vaccinations, or inspecting cafeterias), they are not charged specifically with protecting student sleep, improving public road safety, or boosting state economies—all benefits associated with later school start times.
Our goal was to create conditions where it was in the interests of decisionmakers to do what was right.
School leaders, whether elected or appointed, are also accountable to the broader public, who often view school schedules through the lens of families, work, extracurricular, and childcare arrangements; taxes; or supply of inexpensive afterschool labor. Even if these stakeholders value healthy sleep, they do not necessarily agree that school start times are involved, instead attributing sleep problems to laziness, rebelliousness, poor parenting, and electronics or regarding sleep as a private matter subject to individual/family control.
Others regard sleep as a luxury or sign of laziness and disinterest, or believe early awakenings build character and prepare teenagers for “real life.” Regardless of these differing perspectives, virtually all these people share with later-start-time proponents a desire for safe, healthy, successful youth; however, they believe such goals can be achieved through means other than later school start times.
Just about everyone in a community stands to be affected by school schedule changes, from the students, teachers, school administrators and staff to parents, bus drivers, athletic coaches, small business owners that employ students after school, childcare providers, ballet and piano teachers, and even those who share the roads with sleepy new drivers. Community life revolves around school schedules, and virtually everyone in a community, whether or not they have kids, is potentially affected when schools change their hours (in any direction and for any reason). There is also a common perception that starting school later necessarily involves costly transportation changes, along with equally common misperceptions about why students aren’t getting enough sleep or why anyone should care.
Even if these fears and perceptions are overblown if not entirely unsubstantiated—which experience consistently shows they are—they are enormously powerful politically because they lead to vitriolic outcry from stakeholders across school communities when schools propose changing their hours. It is awareness of this response, including histories of school leaders who have lost their jobs as a result of it, that understandingly leads many policymakers to steer clear of this issue if at all possible.
A New Mindset
Changing our mindset to find common or complementary interests was no mean feat for many of us who had been trained to think like scientists (or, in many cases, were scientists). We had to back off from relying on tomes of research and well supported rebuttals to objections. We still needed those—otherwise we wouldn’t be doing what we were doing—but to get policies made that honored this research and those arguments we had to shift our focus onto benefits of change that overlapped with the interests of decisionmakers, as well as taking steps to reduce resistance to change by people responsible for their positions.
Outcomes that often resonate with school superintendents and board members, for example, include improved attendance (which can mean increased payouts to school districts), graduation rates, behavior, and academic performance. In contrast, outcomes like improved road safety and mental health may similarly resonate with public officials. Policymakers may be more motivated to create and implement policies aimed to address these issues—rather than, say, to improve the sleep health of teenagers. At the same time, they may be more motivated to follow a state law or regulation that requires them to change start times than to take the heat for changing it independently.
We had to shift our focus onto benefits of change that overlapped with the interests of decisionmakers, as well as taking steps to reduce resistance to change by people responsible for their positions.
Finding these common and complementary interests often changed the narrative and synergized cooperative efforts with decisionmakers who were generally more concerned with issues like absenteeism, graduation rates, teen depression, socioeconomic inequalities, and road safety than with adolescent sleep health. Some school district leaders found ways to fit later start times into broader campaigns addressing student emotional well-being and mental health, for example. Some state legislators honed in on the possibility that later start times would boost the state economy by reducing drop-out rates and car crashes involving teenagers.
A caveat in this approach is that we had to avoid distorting or overstating the evidence supporting these common interests, which are often downstream effects of later school start times. It is tempting, for example, for anyone trying to frame later start times as a silver bullet for myriad societal woes, and particularly for whatever problem school leaders or politicians want to target. Advocates can be tempted to make these kinds of promises because they know policymakers often seek rapid, measurable, and certain results when devoting public funds and/or political capital to large systemic changes. The problem is that such claims can be counterproductive if promised outcomes, for which later start times may be necessary but insufficient, fail to materialize.
Getting the Public On Board
Just as important as identifying common interest in decisionmakers is making sure the people to whom they are responsible—aka the public—are aware that change is in their interest as well. Many a well-intentioned superintendent has had their life made miserable by force-feeding a later start time policy on an unwilling and unprepared community. Even a state law that requires the superintendent to do so, and potentially absolves them from blame, is no motivator if public resistance to change continues to make the lives of the people asked to implement it miserable. This is exactly what happened with Florida’s later start time law earlier this year.
Getting the public onboard—aka creating political will—is the holy grail, and here what’s required is not just a common or complementary interest but also a lot of work to make sure the public recognizes it. Here advocates and experts and that good ol’ evidence come back into play, together with collaborative advocacy, education, and engagement strategies involving school leaders, sleep/health experts, and community stakeholders.
In many communities getting the public on board specifically involves messaging efforts by school leaders and sleep/health professionals, including surveys of community habits and needs, face-to-face community forums at diverse times and locations, and materials in multiple languages and formats to help explain the reasons behind and benefits of starting school later. Early and authentic engagement with community members by school leaders to iteratively address perceived obstacles and find creative solutions to logistical and financial challenges—including ongoing efforts to develop implementation plans and flexible polices with teachers, school staff, transportation and childcare providers, and coaches—have also been effective ways to build trust and consensus, damping down the pushback that typically blocks or slows change.
Internal support for change from school leadership who in turn communicate reasons for and desirability of the change to community stakeholders is often essential as well. This is because, as with any kind of systemic change that might pose temporary cost or inconvenience, school leaders are much less likely to experience pushback if they convey their belief in the importance of this change for students, its benefits to other school stakeholders and the wider community, and their conviction that any logistical problems that arise are resolvable. A sleep researcher, health professional, or activist claiming that school systems can find creative ways to adapt to later start times is less credible and effective than a school superintendent in assuaging community concerns.
Whose Interest is it Anyway?
Even when decisionmakers and the public they serve understand that they stand to benefit with later start times, we can never forget the most fundamental reasons behind them. This is where sustained advocacy is essential throughout the change process. When individual schools or districts change start times, for example, advocates from outside the school system, including subject-matter experts, are often the ones who put start times on policy radar and cultivate supportive school leadership. They also often supply or curate information about sleep health, common misconceptions, and best practices for change management that school leaders may not have time, resources, or background to access.
Without these sustained advocacy efforts, and most particularly sustained awareness of why the changes were made, school start times risk going on the chopping block times with every school budget crisis.
Grassroots groups have also worked to seat school board members and superintendents who explicitly prioritize change and worked with them throughout the policy creation and implementation processes to scrutinize cost estimates and use of transportation software/consultancy services, explore alternative schedules, create community surveys and forums, and provide educational resources. Later sleep and health experts have worked with school leaders to sustain sleep-health promotion efforts and to design pre-and post-surveys and other methods to measure impact of changes on student sleep, health, safety, and academics, improve policies, and convey positive results to the community.
Without these sustained advocacy efforts, and most particularly sustained awareness of why the changes were made, school start times risk going on the chopping block times with every school budget crisis. Even as we remember that a focus on the interests of decisionmakers allow schools to change start-time policies, we must also remember that a focus on the interests of the students—especially their sleep, health, safety, and well-being—keep these new policies in place.