School Start Later Essay

Many students across the U.S. are complaining because they need more sleep. There is an easy answer to this and a harder answer that would cost more money. The easy answer is go to sleep earlier. The harder answer would be to change school start times. I believe that we should just go to sleep earlier. This is because we would not have to change schedules, Students aren´t guaranteed to go to sleep at the same time , and after school activities would not have to go into the night. Firstly, changing the school start time would cause schedules to have to change. As Justin O'neill says in his article ¨should schools start later?¨ ¨School bus schedules are arranged not just the needs of not just one school but all the schools in a district...¨
If we were to change start times we would also have to change the stop time. When the extra-curricular activities go later into the night athletes may get tired during practice. Sarah Mckibben´s article also says ¨⅔ of high school students get less than 7 hours of sleep¨ This may not change for some students with extracurricular activities. The homework would also have to be done later in the night. I agree that teens need more sleep, however, I also believe that Changing start times isn't the way to get more sleep. According to Terra Ziporyn Snider, executive director of the national coalition Start School Later, the issue is a ¨political hot potato¨ For several good reasons this is true. There would be much money spent on something we are not even sure would help. And also some bus drivers would have to move. And those aren't all the reasons. while there may be reason to change the start times I believe that some of the benefits are trivial. The main reasons we should keep the start times are that we would have to change many schedules, teens may just go to sleep later, and the extracurricular activities would go later. These are the main reasons but there are still many other reasons. When it comes down to it I believe we should keep the same start