We’ve all been there – your alarm blares at six in the morning, your eyes are heavy, and you think, “What is the worst thing that can happen? An extra fifteen minutes would be really nice.”
That is the reality for many students of all ages; feeling academic pressure to keep up with assignments, exams, and extracurricular activities, fifteen extra minutes of sleep in the morning seems like the only solution.
As a senior in high school, having been in school since PreK when I was four, I think pushing school start times is a quick-fix solution and would do more harm than good.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Workers are most likely to be on the job between eight a.m. and five p.m.” Pushing school start times back will ruin the day-to-day dynamic followed by most American households. Parents who work nine to five Monday through Friday then aren’t capable of dropping their children off at school and would require extra means of transportation, whether that be other family members, hiring nannies, or even finding bus routes connected to their neighborhood, which for some coming from far away, might be impossible.
For parents who work in rigorous fields with strict schedules, delaying start times will add extra burdens. For example, the average cost of childcare in Colorado is $1,200/month. For many, this is unnecessary and parents who work are more than capable of taking their children to school before work when school starts at an appropriate time.
For many parents, especially those of newly schooled children, and even the ones who have high school-aged students, morning drop-off is the icing on the cake to a bad morning where you’re running late, the left shoe is on the right foot, and there is a veil of white snow covering the roadway.
However, many studies have shown that the time spent with your child in the early morning is “truly invaluable”. A 20-minute uninterrupted ride to school with Mom was the best part of my whole non-licensed life; I could roadmap my day while listening to only the best SiriusXM talk radio and follow up with her when I got home.
Pushing back school start times, even by an hour, elongates the school day for all students. If school started at 8:45 a.m. instead of 7:45 a.m., dismissal would be nearly four in the afternoon. For most students, that is when extracurricular, after-school activities are starting. No matter the way the cookie crumbles, someone will always find something to complain about in the education system.
If school ends at four p.m., athletic practices are therefore running later, games are later, and students with after-school jobs are forced to work later. As per the National Center for Education Statistics, on average, students in Colorado have a seven-hour school day whereas students in Connecticut and Delaware have six-and-a-half-hour days. In spite of that, students in Connecticut and Delaware spend 181 days out of the 365 in school on average, whereas Colorado students spend 171.
The less time students spend at school during the day increases the amount of weeks school is in session – possibly eating into their summer vacation.
Much like lions, chimpanzees, and even the ruffled grouse, humans are creatures of habit. Using myself as an example, there is no way I’d be able to switch around my schedule for a later school start time when I have been waking up at six thirty a.m. since kindergarten and am used to the routine that comes with that. Although my school day starts a little later, thanks to off blocks and an awesome counselor, I am still waking up two and a half hours before I need to be out the door (somehow I still leave late every morning, but this isn’t a question of my time management skills). Self-disciplining and learning what morning routine is best for me drastically changed my ability to wake up early.
Since the main argument for pushing back school start times is to allow for more sleep, especially in teenagers, instilling new bedtime and morning routines is the only feasible way to see a change.
According to GoodRx, to produce more melatonin earlier in the night to fall asleep faster, teens can expose themselves to sunlight early in the morning to then trigger nighttime melatonin production sooner, reduce nightly screen time, and watch caffeine intake.
As much as I love a good sparkling orange Celcius to get me through the rest of my school day, it is more worth it to get a good night’s sleep before and feel energized without it.
Driving back school start times is a one-size-fits-all solution to deeper problems in education; giving students access to ample nutrition and adequate breaks during the school day is a way to improve academic performance without adjusting the hours on the clock.
