Why Lower School Start Times?

Why does school start so early in the morning? 7:15 a.m. is, quite frankly, a magnificently ridiculous hour to start school each morning. Studies have shown that it takes around four hours for a teenager to wake up each morning. That means that a student that wakes up at six a.m. is not really lucid until about ten. That accounts for almost two classes where a student’s learning is impeded by their own biological clock. And if students were to attempt to get up early enough to be alert in every class, they would have to wake up at three a.m. Teenagers’ sleep cycles also change as they get older, pushing them to go to sleep later and wake up later. Disturbing those sleep cycles only furthers mediocre learning experiences.

Studies have shown that on average when starting times for schools are later car crashes go down by 41%. Proving that a later start time is not only better for students but for the entire community. Car crashes decrease because students are more awake allowing them to think more clearly and assess their surroundings while driving. Just one more example why a later start time is not a maybe but a must for the community.

The brain isn’t fully done developing until the age of 21, and it’s been proven that most of your development in your brain is done while you’re asleep. So the fact that adolescents get an hour less sleep than adolescents did thirty years ago has an exponential impact on the development of the brain.

Teenagers' melitonin doesn’t kick in until 90 minutes after it does for adults. So even if teenagers went to bed at a decent hour most would lie awake and stare into the darkness.

Since expecting students to function that early in the morning only causes us to waste two class periods, we propose that we have school start later. We suggest a one hour and fifteen minute delay. This would give teens a little of the extra time they need both to sleep and wake up. This would prove beneficial for their health, as well as their grades. And if we were to continue with seven-hour-long school days, this would mean that school would end at 3:30 p.m. This would still allow time for extracurricular activities, such as sports, clubs, and jobs. This is a problem that is easily solved, and will prove valuable in the long run.