Should school start later in the morning? Many believe it should start later but some also don’t think it should. There are many different reasons why it should start later in the morning. Throughout this essay I will be explaining and providing facts on why or why not school should start later in the morning. My goal in this essay is to help you understand the opposing side on whatever side you’re against. 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 don’t 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 don’t do these things but instead play video games or even sleep but those types of kids/teens are very far and few. The students that have practice after school aren’t lazy but rather very 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 hers grades up that student must stay up and do their homework.
But not every student athlete will do this, theirs students who when they get home have to do chores or take care of someone who really needs it. Balancing all this isn’t what you would call a walk in the park, but rather a walk in a maze. So what about the students who don’t 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 there 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 there reasons why they cannot just adjust school start times with ez. 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 with 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 VERY 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. rg)
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 don’t 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 huge 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?
