there are probably fewer people who dreaded the sound of their alarm clock this morning than teenagers heading back for the first day of school and Bergen County's largest school district is among several throughout the state that have taken the plunge to adopt a later start time the majority of residents have long supported pushing back High School daily schedules over concerns that teens just aren't getting enough sleep with piles of medical research to back it but there's also pushback from parents and Educators who are concerned about how a later start to the day will Impact Sports and other activities Raven Santana checked in at Ridgewood High on this first later day of school I think the students are going to be more alert and they're going to be um you know more productive in their class that's because nearly 1800 students 10 Ridgewood High School located in Bergen County's largest school district will get some extra time to sleep after the district changed its time from 7 45 a.m to 8 20 a.m I've been working on this for 10 years now so a lot of these problems and and things that have been worked out and worked through but we have to remember the reason we're doing this is for the kids lawmakers in 2022 introduce legislation mandating all school districts to make similar changes by 2024 2025 pushing High School start times to no earlier than 8 30 a.m but it never passed Ridgewood High School's principal Jeff Naya says giving students more sleep in the morning to be more productive isn't just an opinion it's based on research and science Dr Bert mandelbaum breaks it all down specifically for adolescents that as they go kids get older there is a shift in their normal sleep times so they call it the circadian rhythms and so adolescents have a 2 to three hour phase shifts from when they were younger where it is really hard for them to fall asleep much earlier than 10 30 or 11 and it is really hard for them to wake up much earlier than 7am combined with that we know that they need at least eight hours of sleep if not closer to nine hours of sleep to function and administrators I spoke with here at the schools say they are confident that the extra time and the morning will support students mental health and academic achievements we'll make adjustments I mean just a few years ago we we turned everything upside down for covid and we made that work this is relatively minor adjustment relative to that but very significant and so far as helping kids to to be healthier and to do better in school Ridgewood is one of a handful of districts that have made similar changes including Princeton South Orange Maplewood and Chatham Chatham superintendent Michael lesusa shared the overall impacts in his district since implementing a later start time last year the students are reporting sleeping more to start with and then beyond that they also report uh being more alert during the school day uh being in a better mood being more likely to eat breakfast before the day begins and then beyond that we've seen that there's been a reduction in the number of students who are chronically late to school and a reduction in the number of students who are failing courses we also have seen a reduction in the percentage of our students reporting suicide ideation or very concerning depressive periods we haven't seen an impact a negative or adverse impact on Athletics or extracurricular activities even with pediatricians recommending later start times for high schoolers Maya says there still has been some pushback from those concerned that the time change will negatively impact after school activities like sports he disagrees our sports are going to be just fine practices will be pushed back at most 10 minutes Naya says they will conduct surveys at the end of the year to evaluate and reassess how the time shift went and what else they can improve Ridgewood superintendent now hopes the change will be made in more districts or even Statewide for NJ Spotlight News I'm Raven Santana