By Ben Miller

High school students around the country typically wake up before six in the morning to prepare for classes that begin before eight. Many high schools have been running according to this schedule for centuries. Scientists have studied sleep patterns in adolescents and found that adolescents need eight and a half to nine and a half hours of sleep to be well rested for school. Once this study was conducted, people questioned high school start times and whether they were depriving students of a healthy lifestyle. Sleep affects the students’ ability to learn, and not getting enough sleep may lead to physical problems like higher chances of obesity and depression. Thus, people around the country ask themselves, are early school start times the reason many adolescents are sleep deprived and should these start times be delayed as a result?

Times Remain the Same

With a large majority of high schools still following the traditional schedule, people believe that there is no need for change since the system has been outstanding for years. Traditionalists claim that there is no need to make a change to a system that works well.

Delaying start times would require a complete revision of the school system’s schedule. “There are several objections related to logistical challenges, including bus schedules, athletics, after-school child care and employment, and traffic,” states one expert. Many individuals feel like this change would create chaos because bus schedules would need to be completely reworked, after school sports would become impossible to complete before dark, and day care schedules would be very complicated. This change would cause parents to drastically change their daily schedules as well.

In addition to forcing parents to adjust their schedules, experts raise the point that students would need to be open to the change, as it would cause a rearrangement of after school activities and athletics. These individuals see no reason to make a change, since that system has been successful and everyone’s daily schedules would stay the same.

For Delayed Times

Others believe change is necessary because “early school start times are a significant — and modifiable — contributor to insufficient sleep among adolescents,” according to specialists. Having looked at and analyzed scientific evidence, many people agree that high school students do not receive the sleep that allows them to function at their peak abilities due to early start times and various after school activities.

Several schools around the country decided it was time to make a change and have seen very positive results. “These studies have shown that starting schools later not only helps students get more sleep, but also confers several important associated benefits related to health (lower rates of depressive symptoms), safety (lower rates of car crashes), academic performance (lower drop-out rates, fewer absences and tardies, improvements in standardized reading and math scores), and quality of life (improved sports performance).” Students are more stressed and many people believe that starting school earlier is only making it more difficult to maximize full academic potential of students.

The bottom line:

At the end of the day, the well-being and success for students should be our nation’s top priority while analyzing this debate. Sure, there needs to be creativity in rearranging schedules, but it would be well worth it. Looking at one study, “after implementing delayed school start times, school night sleep duration increased by 45 minutes while average bedtime advanced by 18 minutes. The percentage of students getting less than seven hours of sleep decreased by 79.4%, and those reporting at least eight hours of sleep increased from 16.4% to 54.7%.” This is just one example of the positive effects that delayed start times can bring about. The opportunity to put our youth in the best situation possible dictates this debate. The more prepared our youth are, the better the status of our country is. As more and more school systems delay their start times, the clearer the evidence will become to create a nationwide movement to assist high schoolers.