Florida’s brief attempt to let high school students sleep longer began two years ago when one of the state’s most powerful politicians listened to an audiobook.
The book, “Why We Sleep,” argues that sufficient sleep is fundamental to nearly every aspect of human functioning. Paul Renner, then the Republican speaker of the State House, said reading it turned him into a “sleep evangelist”; he started tracking his own sleep and pressing the book on other lawmakers.
To give teenagers more time to rest, he pushed for a new law that would require public high schools to start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. and middle schools no earlier than 8 a.m. In 2023, Florida became only the second state — after California, its political opposite — to adopt such a requirement, and it asked schools to comply by 2026.
“School start times are one of those issues that both Republicans and Democrats can get behind,” Mr. Renner said in an interview.
This year, it all fell apart.
Facing growing opposition from school administrators who said the later times were unworkable and costly, the Legislature repealed the requirement last month.
Florida’s experiment was over before it began, an example of a policy driven by a single powerful lawmaker that flopped once he was termed out of office. It also illustrates how, even as concerns grow about the well-being of American teenagers, a modest scheduling shift with broad support from scientific and medical experts can struggle to gain traction.
Adelaide Sandwith recently finished her sophomore year at Fort Walton Beach High School in the Florida Panhandle, where classes begin at 7 a.m. The repeal means another two years of sleeping through her alarm at 5:20 a.m.
“I’m basically a zombie,” she said of stumbling through her morning routine, typically after her mother has to shake her out of a deep sleep. “I’m not built for waking up so early.”
Biological changes during adolescence keep many teenagers from falling asleep before 11 p.m., making it harder for them to get up early. Yet thousands of American high schools require students to wake up before they are sufficiently rested, despite scientific studies showing that later start times would benefit their mental and physical health and learning outcomes.
Schools take an active role in making sure students receive nutritious meals and exercise, but most do not view it as their responsibility to help students get a good night’s rest.
“It’s important that children get sleep,” said State Representative Anne Gerwig, a Republican from Palm Beach County who cosponsored the repeal bill, “but the best way to accomplish that is for them to go to bed earlier the night before, and maybe not stay up playing video games.”
Adolescents who are chronically sleep deprived are at greater risk of anxiety and mood disorders, motor vehicle accidents and poorer grades. The American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Sleep Medicine and American Medical Association have all recommended that middle and high schools begin no earlier than 8:30 a.m.
But in Florida, only 24 percent of public high schools start that late, according to a survey conducted for the Legislature. Nearly half begin before 7:30 a.m.
“It doesn’t matter if you tell kids they should get healthy sleep if you create a system in which they can’t,” said Terra Ziporyn, a science historian who founded Start School Later, an advocacy group.
The Sandwith family had celebrated the 2023 legislation. “We’ll all get an extra hour of sleep,” Adelaide’s mother, Julia Sandwith, recalled thinking. Her son, a seventh grader, had been excited that the change would arrive before he started high school.
“Now that they’re going to go back on that, it’s very disappointing,” she said.
When lawmakers debated the bill in 2023, some school administrators raised concerns about the logistics and cost. But the bill’s co-sponsor, State Senator Danny Burgess, a Republican from north of Tampa, cited research showing that after Seattle’s schools pushed back start times by nearly an hour, students got 34 more minutes of sleep and earned significantly better grades.
“Change can be hard,” he said before a final vote, but “what we are doing now is not what’s best for our kids.”
The bill passed the House and Senate with large bipartisan majorities, and Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it in May 2023.
Some Florida districts had already pushed back their middle and high school start times. In 2017, the Hillsborough County school district, which includes Tampa, changed its high school start times to 8:30 a.m. based on the preferences of parents, students and staff. “There wasn’t the outrage that you thought would happen,” Chris Farkas, a deputy superintendent, said last year.
In Volusia County, which changed middle and high school start times in 2019, the district allowed more time for buses to take high schoolers home during what was now rush-hour traffic. It created a supervised before-school program for students who could not be dropped off later. And it moved some athletic practices to the morning.
“We just came at it from the mind-set that we were going to make it work,” said Rachel Hazel, a former deputy superintendent who left the district last year.
Elsewhere, opposition began to drown out support soon after the requirement was passed. Some large school districts calculated that changing high school schedules would require more buses at a time when there was a nationwide shortage of drivers, because younger students already went to school later and relied on the same vehicles.
And they anticipated other costs, according to Danielle Thomas, a lobbyist for the Florida School Boards Association. “Starting later means ending the day later, which means sports and after-school athletics are later, which means now they have to put lights on fields that don’t currently have lights,” she said.
Dr. Thomas said her association did not push for a repeal while Mr. Renner was still in office, “because it was a priority of his.” As soon as he departed in 2024, opponents pounced.
State Senator Jennifer Bradley, a Republican from Northeast Florida who had voted to require later start times, filed the repeal bill in January. The original measure had been “well intentioned,” she said, but smaller school districts could not easily absorb the costs of “a huge unfunded mandate.”
The bill allowed districts to keep early start times if they submitted a report documenting that they had held public discussions about establishing later ones, and listing any undesired consequences they anticipated. Both legislative chambers passed it unanimously.
On the Senate floor last month, Mr. Burgess said it was “bittersweet” to vote to repeal his own bill. But without more resources and time to enact the requirement, “we are possibly walking into a minefield.” Mr. DeSantis signed the repeal on May 21.
The Florida Education Association, the state’s largest teacher’s union, praised the passage of the repeal bill. “Decisions such as when schools start are best made at the local level,” it said in a statement.
Andrew Spar, the union president, acknowledged that the science about the benefits of later start times was clear and that they had “worked out pretty good” in Volusia County, where he had taught and raised his daughter. But he said that local administrators and parents should decide such changes, district by district.
“It takes time,” he said in an interview. “It takes bringing people along.”
That sentiment against top-down mandates appears to hold elsewhere. School districts around the country have delayed school start times, including in Denver and Albuquerque, but states have shown little appetite. Although legislators have filed bills in Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, and Oregon, none have enacted them.
Mr. Renner, the bill’s original champion, said the issue was not going away.
“Kids are getting four, five, six hours of sleep,” he said. “It’s not enough. If you care about their academic and mental health, you’ve got to figure it out.”
Patricia Mazzei is the lead reporter for The Times in Miami, covering Florida and Puerto Rico.
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