Center for Health and Homeland Security; Center for Health Outcomes Research; University of Maryland, Baltimore; 500 West Baltimore St, Baltimore, MD 21201, USA; Department of Behavioral and Community Health, School of Public Health, University of Maryland, College Park, 4200 Valley Dr, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
Orange County Public Defender, Juvenile Court Office, 341 The City Drive South, Suite 307, Orange, CA 92868, USA.
Sleep Health. 2017 Dec;3(6):486-497. doi: 10.1016/j.sleh.2017.09.003. Epub 2017 Oct 17.
The increasing scientific evidence that early school start times are harmful to the health and safety of teenagers has generated much recent debate about changing school start times policies for adolescent students. Although efforts to promote and implement such changes have proliferated in the United States in recent years, they have rarely been supported by law-based arguments and messages that leverage the existing legal infrastructure regulating public education and child welfare in the United States. Furthermore, the legal bases to support or resist such changes have not been explored in detail to date. This article provides an overview of how law-based arguments and messages can be constructed and applied to advocate for later school start time policies in US public secondary schools. The legal infrastructure impacting school start time policies in the United States is briefly reviewed, including descriptions of how government regulates education, what legal obligations school officials have concerning their students' welfare, and what laws and public policies currently exist that address adolescent sleep health and safety. On the basis of this legal infrastructure, some hypothetical examples of law-based arguments and messages that could be applied to various types of advocacy activities (eg, litigation, legislative and administrative advocacy, media and public outreach) to promote later school start times are discussed. Particular consideration is given to hypothetical arguments and messages aimed at emphasizing the consistency of later school start time policies with existing child welfare law and practices, legal responsibilities of school officials and governmental authorities, and societal values and norms.
越来越多的科学证据表明，过早的上学时间对青少年的健康和安全有害，这引发了最近关于改变青少年学生上学时间政策的大量争论。尽管近年来美国已经大力推动并实施了这些改革，但它们很少得到基于法律的论点和信息的支持，而这些论点和信息利用了美国现有的监管公共教育和儿童福利的法律架构。此外，到目前为止，还没有详细探讨支持或抵制这些变化的法律依据。本文概述了如何构建和应用基于法律的论点和信息，以倡导美国公立中学推迟上学时间的政策。简要回顾了影响美国上学时间政策的法律架构，包括描述政府如何监管教育、学校官员对学生福利有哪些法律义务，以及目前存在哪些涉及青少年睡眠健康和安全的法律和公共政策。在此法律架构的基础上，讨论了一些基于法律的论点和信息的假设性例子，这些论点和信息可应用于各种倡导活动（例如诉讼、立法和行政倡导、媒体和公众外展），以促进推迟上学时间。特别考虑了旨在强调推迟上学时间政策与现有儿童福利法和实践、学校官员和政府当局的法律责任以及社会价值观和规范的一致性的假设性论点和信息。
