Dr. Caitlin Ryser addresses the Warsaw Community School Board Monday night, Jan. 14.

WARSAW — Anyone who has ever had the daunting task of waking up a teenager for school would have listened intently to a presentation given to the Warsaw Community Schools Board of Trustees on Monday night, Jan. 14.

Dr. Caitlin Ryser, a medical doctor with nearly two decades of experience, told the board that, biologically, delaying school start times for middle school and high school students has been scientifically proven to create positive outcomes in a variety of areas.

Ryser told the board that experts recommend “that teens get eight and a half to nine and a half hours of sleep per night. The National Sleep Foundation found that 87 percent of high school students get less than eight hours of sleep and 40 percent get six hours or less.”

According to Ryser, the need for more sleep is related to the biology of students entering and fully engaged in puberty. She told the board that melatonin, the hormone that helps to regulate sleep, is released in adults around 9 p.m., but is delayed in adolescents for an hour or more.

“So when your teenagers say they’re not tired at bedtime, they really aren’t,” she said.

According to Ryser, these biological factors contribute to sleep deprivation when students have to wake up early in the morning to prepare for school. The resulting lack of sleep contributes to poorer academic performance and also play a role in many other issues such as car accidents, drug and alcohol use, tobacco use or vaping and suicidality. She added that more sleep also translates to higher graduation rates.

Newly-elected board member Michael Coon asked the doctor if the research supported later school start times for elementary school students.

“There is obviously an overwhelming amount of research with regard to secondary school students,” Ryser said. “There is less for elementary school.”

Ryser said that for students in fifth grade and below, sleep duration remains constant despite changes in school start times. She added that students in sixth grade began to show signs of following the patterns of older students. “The ones that are a little bit more on the bubble are sixth graders,” she said.

Ryser thanked the board for allowing her to present what she called evidence-based data that seems to support starting school at a later time for students in middle school and high school.

“This is really an interesting area where medicine and education come together,” Ryser said.

WCS Superintendent Dr. David Hoffert thanked Ryser for adding to the school corporation’s “repertoire of knowledge” on the subject.

According to Ryser, the research seems to support start times for middle school and high school students at a time after 8:30 a.m.

“This is not going to go away,” she said. “This is 20 years of research and this is biology.”