More sleep in Seattle: Later school start helps kids get zzz

SEATTLE (AP) – High school students are getting more sleep in Seattle. That’s the finding of a study on later school start times.

Teenagers wore activity monitors to discover whether a later start to the school day would help them get more sleep. It did, adding 34 minutes of slumber a night. They also reported less daytime sleepiness, and grades improved.

The Seattle School District pushed back its start time to 8:45 a.m. in 2016 for high schools and most middle schools, joining other U.S. school districts adopting similar changes to help sleep-deprived teens.

The results of the University of Washington study were published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.