Should School Start Later Than They Do?

Schools should start later than they do. According to CDC the average start time for schools in america is 8:03am. Although this is the average, many schools start as early as 7:00am. Early start times for school can be very challenging for students, as a former high school student my morning started very early, I woke up at 5:30am to make it to school at 8:00am. Many students who have to wake up early for school get less sleep, do not perform well in school and often times do not show up to class or have many tardies. These three issues can simply be resolved by starting school later for students. Others may oppose and say that later start times would affect parents schedules, but students should have later start dates to avoid those issues.
Many students find it difficult to be able to wake up early enough to get ready for school and commute. In the article To keep teenagers alert, schools let them sleep by the New York times it says “Jilly Dos Santos really did try to get to school on time. She set three successive alarms on her phone. Skipped breakfast. Hastily applied makeup while her fuming father drove. But last year she rarely made it into the frantic scrum at the doors of Rock Bridge High School here by the first bell, at 7:50 a.m.Then she heard that the school board was about to make the day start even earlier, at 7.20 a.m.“I thought, if that happens, I will die,” recalled Jilly, 17. “I will drop out of school!”(Hoffman). This quote is an example of how much students try hard to make it to school on time and still barely make it. Jilly is only 17 and she has to have 3 alarms to wake her up, and even with that she has to skip breakfast to arrive to school on time. Schools can not start earlier because students will not make it, as Jilly said in the quote she will drop out if schools started earlier. In order to keep students in school pushing the start times forward can help students rest, eat and be prepared and alert for
Sleep is essential in a student's life, without the proper amount of sleep students face many obstacles in their health and learning in the article Backgrounder: Later school start times by the national sleep foundation it says “Adolescents today face a widespread chronic health problem: sleep deprivation. Although society often views sleep as a luxury that ambitious or active people cannot afford, research shows that getting enough sleep is a biological necessity, as important to good health as eating well or exercising. Teens are among those least likely to get enough sleep; while they need on average 9 1/4 hours of sleep per night for optimal performance, health and brain development, teens average fewer than 7 hours per school night by the end of high school, and most report feeling tired during the day (Wolfson & Carskadon, 1998). The roots of the problem include poor teen sleep habits that do not allow for enough hours of quality sleep; hectic schedules with afterschool activities and jobs, homework hours and family obligations; and a clash between societal demands, such as early school start times , and biological changes that put most teens on a later sleep-wake clock. As a result, when it is time to wake up for school, the adolescent’s body says it is still the middle of the night, and he or she has had too little sleep to feel rested and alert.” (National sleep foundation). This article proves that