Should School Start Times?

Over 87% of teenagers don’t get enough sleep and go to school tired. Teenagers have constant expectations to live up to, but with the amount of sleep they’re getting it can be seemingly impossible. The question has been brought up time and time again, should the school day start later? Because of the risks of not getting enough sleep, trying to keep up with their their busy schedules, and being in their adolescent years, having the school day start later would help teenagers around the world immensely.

Schools all around the nation have starting times for school, that are too early for the students and teachers alike. Schools starting times should be 8:30 in the morning or later, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Sleep loss has become more common in children due to early start times which only gives them 6-7 hours of sleep a night when growing children should have 8-9 hours a night. children suffer the chronic loss of sleep due to the hormonal roller coaster that you call puberty, which only lets them begin to go into a REM sleep around 10 p.m. . It’s also been proven that adolescent children suffer from highers risks of physical health problems, mental health problems, lower test scores, missing school, substance abuse, and being in a car crash due to sleep deprivation. Students end up having to get up before 6:30 to get ready and catch the bus or walk to school, but when you have to study for hours after school, eat, clean up, participate in extracurricular activities, including sports and clubs, and do chores in less than 4 hours to get the sleep they require to be healthy mentally and physically it’s almost impossible. School should start later to better our future generations, with more sleep we could have more positive members of societies.

In order to do so, schools all over the world should start at a later time in order for students to get better grades, increase the amount of sleep students need, and to just be more healthy as a whole. For high school students, sleep is the biggest contribution to do well academically. To prevent a drop in grades and grade point averages, less car crash fatalities, development of bad habits and behavioral attitudes, it can make the world a better place, even just slightly, to know that teenagers are more alert and awake of their actions. This goes to show that sleep is very important and that schools should adjust their schedules to take care of this serious

Do you ever wake up and feel like you haven’t gotten enough sleep? The reason is because in reality you probably haven’t. Studies show that schools should not start any earlier that 8:30 in the morning due to teens suffering from sleep deprivation. There are many negative effects this condition can have on a teens body including a direct effect on one’s physical and mental health, public safety and excelling in the future. In the Ted Talk video, " Why school should start later for teens" by, Wendy Troxel.  Ms. Troxel explained why school should start later for teens.. Students are very drowsy in the morning and are usually rushing to get to school on time which limits breakfasts times and healthy food options. Schools should start no earlier than 8:30 a.m.  for several reasons  but sleep deprivation is  the most important. Sleep deprivation can cause a direct effect to a child’s general health and behavior, public safety and potentially future success.

Almost 10% of U.S. high schools start before 7:30 a.m. Over 20% of middle schools start class at 7:45 a.m. or earlier. This is leaving students everywhere overwhelmed and tired. This can lead to tremendous effects on their health and grades. Research shows that only do later start times improve those things, but ends up increasing the school's yearly income in the long run. For these reasons, schools should make their hours later because it can affect students grades and health in a positive way.

If you want better grades and more sleep, school should start later. Many schools are considering early start times. In fact, at least three schools in Maine are considering starting school later. Middle and high schools should start later because students and parents would be less tired and because children would be able to play outside when the sun is out.

Having a later school start time can increase a student’s academic grades and awareness. Thirty-three percent of teens say that they fell asleep in class. Even though this is a small portion of teens, falling asleep in class shouldn’t even happen once. Also, this means they are getting less than what they need,(eight to nine hours of sleep a night). A school needs to pack as much teaching time as they can in a day, but if that means waking up a student at a time so early, then there's no point.When a student doesn’t sleep as much, students are not aware as they would be if they had a good night’s rest. If students had this sleep, the would pay more attention in class. Therefor, a student would have better grades.

Have you ever been really tired when you wake up for school in the morning? Sleep is very important to all teens, or it should be. Young adults should have 8.5-9.25 hours of sleep every night, according to the National Sleep Foundation (NSF), in Sarah McKibben’s article “Wake Up Calls”. Unfortunately, two-thirds of teens are getting less than 7 hours of sleep each night, according to the NSF’s chart. This is causing a large number of schools and scientists to think that schools should start later in the morning. I fiercely disagree with this. Schools should not start later because starting later for high schools would cause too many negative consequences.

Justin O’Neill in his article, “Should Schools Start Later?” found that, “...Many parents would no longer have time to drive their kids to

In the article “Pediatricians Say School Should Start Later For Teens’ Health” it states,“...... a National Sleep Foundation poll found that 59 percent of middle schoolers and 87 percent of high schoolers are getting less than the recommended 8 ½ to 9 ½ hours of sleep a night. ”(Shute 2). Many people say that school start time is affecting students’ health.

Many people believe that there could be negative effects from pushing school start times back. One of the major issues that are believed to arise from this is impact it will have on the schedules for parents, busses and extra- curricular activities. While it is true that pushing start times back will have an effect on schedules the impact will not be a necessarily bad thing. typically speaking parents go into work between eight o'clock and nine o'clock, so if schools change their start times it "may lead to increased responsibility" in teens. "This means teens will have to get themselves up, prepare breakfast and head to school on their own," (Pros and Cons of Later School Start Times). Teens at some point are going to have to learn responsibility so it is better for them to learn to be responsible while they are still at home instead of waiting until they have moved out and are at college. Transportation is also a major discussion in the school start time issue. Some school district need to use the same busses for elementary,

Not only is sleep important to have but is also needed to be fully aware of your surroundings . As indicted by, Desi Jedelkin, 3 reasons school should start later according to science," Evidence shows that pushing back school start times, can actually, cut the risk of car crashes". when researcher tested this theory, car accidents caused by teenage drivers dropped almost 17 percent and in places that didn't change the time,car crashes increased by 8%. Not only is this something to keep in mind but is also super important knowing that we can save peoples lives with just a change in time.

Schools need to start later. The reason is students don’t get enough sleep, and are often sleepy or tired in class. So parent need to make sure and their children to sleep

Studies show that kids who sleep in get fantastic learning during the day. People sleep threw their alarms and they miss the bus and people are not as cranky. Schools make kids basically sleep during class because they can't stay awake. We can't drink coffee in school to keep us awake. The big problem that the schools are worried about is that the kids are going to stay up later. But that is their choice that they make. Kids are more behaved when they are more fully awake and they get terrific grades in school. Kids on test days tend to be more relaxed when they have a huge test.

Students should get justice and get school start times pushed back till later morning hours,and 64.6% of YHS students think that we should start school at 9:00 AM. instead of 7:50 AM. THe students of YHS and other schools in the country should be able to choose their own school start times because kids are stressed and not getting good grades, not focused because they are exhausted from doing homework and studying until midnight and past that, finally a lot of students do not show up to school on time or at all because they get little sleep. We should start school later is because kids are extremely stressed because they have to go perform for a grade and their brains are still trying to wake up. It is also proven that kids do worse in their 1st and 4th periods. Kids need school pushed back at least an hour because kids are up until midnight and past that doing homework and studying not getting the sleep their bodies need to be successful and think right. My final point is kids will be attending school more often than not because they will not be deprived of sleep. Students still might be up late doing homework and studying but they will still be getting good sleep because school will be starting 1 to 2 hours later than the time we have now. Our students are sleep deprived, not focused and stressed, and have bad attendance because they get little sleep these are a few reasons why we should have school pushed back to a later start time.