PRiME in the NEWS: Courtney Vahle “We need to rethink school start times in Missouri'“

In the fall of 2024, PRiME’s Director of Operations, Dr. Courtney Vahle (With co-author, Paul Wunnenberg) took a deep dive into high school start times across Missouri.  After compiling a first-of-its-kind, comprehensive dataset of Missouri high school start times, containing 295 high schools from 230 school districts across the state, the authors found that the Missouri statewide average start time, 7:48 AM, is a full 42 minutes earlier than the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends.

Dr. Vahle in her op ed for St. Louis Post-Dispatch: 

“An 11 p.m. bedtime is more in line with adolescent circadian rhythms and still reasonable with the onslaught of after school activities. Pair that with an 8:30 a.m. start time, and Missouri would enable students to get 8.5 hours of sleep with a 7:30 a.m. wake up and still have an hour to get to school on time. Maintaining precedent is costing our kids sleep. There is a misalignment between current Missouri high school start times and the prioritization of the rest time our students need.”

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