You’re waking up on a Thursday morning and the night before you had to do a lot of homework so you fell asleep at 1 a.m., but you have to wake up at 6 a.m. to get to earlybird on time. You only got 5 hours of sleep instead of the recommended 8-10 hours. Although you could just drink some coffee or an energy drink to get the energy you need, it would be way healthier and better for learning if you just got a bit more sleep.
Although moving the school start time back might not get you the recommended amount of sleep it would definitely help. Just 30 more minutes of sleep can be night and day for someone with sleep deprivation. The five hours of sleep mentioned above isn’t too rare with 20% of highschoolers getting less than 6 hours of sleep a night according to the CDC.
One big reason not to change the school start time is that it would mess up schedules. A lot of things could be moved back to a later time, but not everything could be changed. Any events with other schools would not be changed, so some students would have to leave school earlier, missing more learning time. Also if people get dropped off or picked up before and after school they might not be able to change their schedule that easily.
The change in schedules would be hard, but it would only be bad for a short time until we get used to it. Also we would plan the schedule time at least a year in advance so people would have time to prepare for the change.
Experts recommend starting school at 8:30 or later and we start at 8:15 so we aren’t that far away, but it would probably be best for the school and students if we start even later than that. Lack of sleep can lead to a lot of bad things like worse grades, more car crashes, worse mental health and sleep deprived students are almost twice as likely to get drug addictions.
Over 80 percent of high school students drink caffeine regularly. If you walk down the hallways and look in recycling bins outside of class rooms they’re filled with energy drink cans, and students are constantly drinking caffeinated beverages like coffee or energy drinks during class. Having too much caffeine can lead to several health problems like anxiety, more sleep problems and heart problems.
When schools start earlier students are more likely to be absent or tardy because they just didn’t get enough sleep. students’ sleep is also hurt by things like too much homework, and a lot of students have to get up earlier because they live further away and need to drive longer to get to school.
In conclusion we should move the school start time back to help students get more sleep and create a better learning environment.
