By JAMIE MARTINES of The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
As darkness faded just after 7 a.m. recently, sleepy high school students across Allegheny and Westmoreland counties stood at bus stops or steered vehicles to school.
Others already were inside on the way to breakfast or study halls, while others were beginning their first academic classes of the day.
Districts in and around Pittsburgh, including some whose first bell rings at 7 a.m., are evaluating daily schedules as research and day-to-day experience make it increasingly clear that later start times could benefit students’ mental health and academic success.
“What we’re worried about is when you really start to look at the stress, it leads to things like depression, it leads to things like suicide, it leads to risk-taking behaviors,” said Robert Scherrer, superintendent in the North Allegheny School District. “And some of those are tied directly to sleep, in some cases, but they’re also mental health concerns.”
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