CALmatters: Can we protect kids from becoming zombies?

We’ve all seen children, often very young children, hunched over from heavy book backpacks, shuffling along sidewalks just an hour or two after sunrise on their way to school.

They look like zombies, and that’s because California’s public schools often begin their classes so early in the morning that many of them have had much less sleep than their still-growing bodies demand.

Sleep deprivation among children and adolescents is a public health calamity, as medical and scientific authorities have repeatedly warned.

A state legislative staff report last year highlighted those warnings this way: “The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association (AMA) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are among the organizations and experts that have reported on the harm being done to the physical and emotional health of adolescents due to the sleep deprivation caused by such developmentally-misaligned school hours.

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