Middle School Start Times

About 59% of middle school students aren’t getting the recommended nine hours of sleep each night that they need.As a result, many middle school students are sleep deprived. To fix this, middle school start times should be later than what they currently are because early start times negatively affect academics, has an affect on mental and physical health, and contributes to car accidents and injuries through the day. First of all, middle school start times should be later than what they currently are because having an early start time has be proven to negatively affect academics. For example, as stated on sleepingresources.com, “The American Academy of Sleep Medicine did a study that shows that lack of sleep reduces concentration no matter
First of all, according to sleepingresources.com, “When teens have an early start time and are driving to school in the morning while being tired, they are at a bigger risk for a traffic accident.” This is because when teens are driving and are tired their reaction times are slower. Secondly, tired drivers from early start times isn’t just affecting teens but also the parents who drive their teens to school. According to sleeping resources.com, “drowsiness contributes to over 100,000 car crashes per year.” So when a parent wakes up early to take their child to school they are tired and more at risk to get in a car crash causing them and their child to be in danger. Also, having a later start time for middle schoolers would lower the injuries that happen to the school’s athletes. This is because a tired athlete would be drowsy and have a later reaction time which could put them at higher risk for an injury. So, overall by making middle school start times later students will be much safer and will be at a lower risk for car accidents and injuries during the
People who think switching the schedules would be hard because then they would run into elementary school schedules and then buses wouldn’t be able to get everyone home on time if the schools shared buses between elementary school and middle school. Although, a solution to this would be to just simply switch the elementary school schedules to earlier. Though some people might say that it wouldn’t be fair to just make younger kids go to school earlier. Though according to www.npr.com, “kids before their teen years don’t need to sleep in as long and don’t stay up as late. This is because their bodies sleep schedule haven’t shifted yet. Teens automatically stay up later, making it hard to get to sleep before 10:30, and sleep in later, making it difficult to wake up before 8:00.” So, this is why it would be easier for an elementary school student to wake up earlier. In addition, according to sleepfoundation.org, “teens are sleep deprived because of early start times.” By just simply switching middle school start times with elementary school start times , which would be a solution to the bus problem, schools could make sure teens are getting the recommended amount of