Essay On Why School Should Start Later

Should school start later in the morning? Many believe it should start later, but some also do not think it should. There are many different reasons why it should start later in the morning. Even though the releases for both school and extracurricular activities will result in a later release times, school should start later because there are less dropouts and starting school later also results in better test scores. According to the article Wake up call by Sarah Mckibben, “Most adolescents (ages 12-25) need 8.5-9.25 hours of sleep per night.” But most of these adolescents do not get the recommended amount of hours sleep, so then what are they doing? These adolescents can be doing anything from homework to after school activities. There are
some kids/teens that do not do these things, but instead play video games or even sleep, but those types of kids/teens are far and few. The students that have practice after school are not lazy, but rather busy, not every student athlete has enough time to go to practice and then get home and have homework to do. This leads to sleep deprivation because of the stress of having to keep their grades up, so in order to keep his or her grades up that student must stay up and do their homework. But, not every student athlete will do this, there are students who, when they get home have to do chores or take care of someone who really needs it. Balancing all this is not what you would call a walk in the park, but rather a walk in a maze. So what about the students who do not have after school practice? Well some students also do have jobs. Jobs that are very important in this small community we live in, and not all of those students has the time to school work or study for tests. So when can they find time to finish whatever they may need to finish? The answer is simple, after they’re finished with their work. But how exactly can they still go to bed and get the recommended amount of hours need in order to feel well rested and productive the next morning? The answer yet again is simple, you can’t. If that student cared about his or her grades they’d have to do all their homework after work. Again, this will lead to sleep deprivation and potentially cause them to sleep during classes and losing some education that can be very helpful in their future. According to many different doctors if schools started just an hour later this problem will be solved. But their reasons why they cannot just adjust school start times with ease. So let me explain. Transportation, this is a huge issue with change school start times. “Because most school districts have a delicately balanced bus transportation system designed to run as efficiently and inexpensively as possible, any change in the school schedule can have a severe impact. The specific circumstances in each district vary, but problems that arise can include cost, recruiting drivers, and/or redesigning the routes. One solution that has worked to solve this problem is flipping start times, most commonly elementary to high school. This solution requires no extra buses or drivers, just a change in the order of pickups. This schedule also seems to be more appropriate to elementary school students’ sleep schedules, because young children tend to wake up earlier in the morning. This is a very dicey issue; however, in districts where the start time is quite early. If the young students have to go to school so early, they have to go to bed early (because they need 10 - 11 hours of sleep). Parents may not get home from work until very near or after bedtime. The direct flip cannot work unless all start times are reasonable.”
Another solution that may be implemented is a shift to public transportation for older students. In many cases, the public bus routes are similar to yellow bus routes, and can be used by students. Many districts have found they can actually save money by buying students bus passes and eliminating a large portion of their yellow bus fleet. Some communities face another problem, which is that shifting start times will impact traffic congestion and commuting for both teachers and students. Teen drivers are at the highest risk for drowsy driving; however, and preliminary studies have shown that delaying their school start time has a significant effect in lowering the occurrence of such crashes.” (sleepfoundation.org) What this paragraph is saying is that in order to change the start time the schools will also have to change the transportation times, which in the end can cause more money spent the busses and other school transportation. So a possible solution is to change the start times with an elementary school or a middle school so that way they only have to change the location and drivers. So why do not we do that? Well because then the elementary or the middle school students will not be getting their recommended amount of sleep and no school district would want that for their schools. That being said, what can we do? The next argument is public resources. “If school ends later, students will have less time to use the library, among many other community resources. However, students do seem to be able to work more efficiently when they are less sleep deprived, and could therefore make better use of the time they do have.”(sleepfoundation.org) This is another issue with starting school later. The effect of starting later is school also ending later, which interrupts with any resources we might need after school, things like the library, appointments, food, etc. So how exactly can we can we balance all this? The third argument is to do with teachers. If schools ended, later what would that mean for them? For most it will mean less time with their families, for others it might just mean a later time to get home, but for the teachers with families this later ending time will be harder on his or her parenting. If schools had a later ending time, then teachers would get home later and have less time to spend with their kids; they would not be able to play with their kids, feed them, have time to relax, or have much time to spend with his or her wife or husband, and still be expected to get the recommended amount of sleep. This is all just a small part of why the schools haven’t decided to change the school times just yet. There are already some schools that have changed their start times just to experiment and see if it actually will affect the students in any way. For example, a school in Illinois has decided to change its start time by just twenty-five minutes. According to Cathaleen Chen, who works on cs monitor, “There are three main reasons why we wanted to start our day later,” Stevenson principal Troy Gobble explains in an announcement video. First of all, he says, “we’ve been looking at the research on teenage sleep. The AAP, which is a leading organization on teenage health, has made it very clear that teenage students should not start school before 8:30. And we know from surveys of our own students that many of them do not go to bed until after 11 o’clock on school nights, so there are many students who are probably getting six hours of sleep or less.” This is what lead the school to change its start time. Even though the start time is only 25 minutes later the students have been impacted severally but not in a bad way. More students have been able to sleep longer and be productive at school. Less students have been falling asleep. This seems like a great change, and it looks like the school and the students are completely happy about this change. Although there are not very many reasons why school should not start later we need to understand those reasons, while we look at the positive reasons school should start later.
There is plenty of reasons why school should start later but were not going to be getting into every single reasons why, instead just the most important reasons why. Sleep, the main reasons as to why this is a huge topic. If school was to start a bit later in the morning then students will have more sleeping time and be more productive during the school day. “Since 2014, the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended that high schools should start the academic day at "8:30 a.m. or later." But that is still not the case for the vast majority of high schools in the U.S..” Many schools do not start at 8:30 in fact, according to Sarah Mckibben article (Wake Up Call) 43% public high schools start before 8:00 a.m.. Which may not sound like a whole lot but when you look at the bigger picture you’ll realize how much schools 43% is. There are a total of 21,000 high schools in the United States alone. That means that 9,030 public high schools around the United States starts before 8:00 a.m.. Some may only start at 8:05 a.m. excluding them from the
count.
The next reasons as to why most people want to start school later in the day is because most students do not get the recommended 8.5 to 9.25 hours to sleep they need in order to be completely awake and functioning throughout their day of school. This also leads into another main reasons as to why school should start later. Most students do not get the recommended amount of hours slept, the students will most likely fall asleep in their classes and essentially lose some of their education. It’s estimated that 33% of students fall asleep in their classes which is roughly 33,567,000. That is a lot of students that fall asleep in class on a daily basis.
In the article “Why school should start later in the morning,” “The CDC’s recommendations come a year after the American Academy of Pediatrics urged schools to adjust start times so more kids would get the recommended 8.5 to 9.5 hours of nightly rest. Both the CDC and the pediatricians’ group cited significant risks that come with lack of sleep, including higher rates of obesity and depression and motor-vehicle accidents among teens as well as an overall lower quality of life.” This is talking about how schools should start later so students have more time to sleep. According to the quote, not getting the right amount of sleep can lead to obesity, depression, and even an increase in car crashes.
According to the article “Snooze!
What Time Experts Say High School Should Really Start?” “For 10-year-olds, the ideal school day should kick off around 8 a.m. For 16-year-olds, between 10 a.m. and 10:30 would work best. And as for 18-year-olds, they shouldn't hit the books until sometime between 11 a.m. and 11:30 a.m.” This means that a majority of the schools have been doing wrong, according to experts.
In conclusion school should be pushed to start at least at 8:30. According to the facts there are more reasons as to why students should as opposed to why students should not start school later, but this conclusion is only based on facts and the vast majority of the view on this topic. We as a country need together on this and look at all the positives and negatives and just work around them so we can become a better country and head toward a better future for all the students that are here and those to
come.