Did you know that most teenagers should get about nine to ten hours of sleep, but most high schoolers at Mount Vernon have said they get about seven hours of sleep. Students are not able to get enough sleep due to homework, sports, and work. Not getting enough sleep can cause you to do worse mentally and physically. An easy way we can resolve this issue is by starting school later on in the day. 

School should start at about 9:15 or 10:15, but still end at 3:15. Since students only get seven hours of sleep, a 9:15 school start time would give kids one more hour to sleep, allowing for eight hours of rest. This is still below the recommended limit for teenagers. If schools started at 10:15 this would give the recommended amount of sleep for teenagers. The reason most students can’t go to sleep at ten and wake up at seven is because most students have after school activities, work, then homework and other stuff to do after school.

Some people may argue that the shorter school day will cause us to have shorter classes causing us to miss out on valuable information that we will need to function in the real world. However, according to Edutopia, they have found that 95 percent of people will forget most of the stuff they learned in school.

Another reason why schools should start later is because fewer people would get tardies or fall asleep in class. Every morning I see at least three people come in late, and then at least five people falling asleep in class. Most people would not get tardies or be falling asleep in class if we start school later.

Schools starting later can give more time for people to make breakfast. Breakfast is very important because it helps your brain and that’s how you get energy. People who skip breakfast are more likely to have clogged arteries and it is linked to other health issues like high blood pressure and obesity. Some people may feel like they need to skip breakfast to make it to school on time because they might not have enough time in the morning to eat.

If the school starts later it can help students because fewer people will be late, fewer people will fall asleep in class, everyone will get more sleep and eat a better breakfast. With the 8:15 start time lots of students are getting less sleep, more people getting late, some students skipping breakfast, and students not paying attention because they are tired. If school started later there would not be any of these problems.