Schools have always maintained an early start time so that students could get an early start on education; however, this may be preventing many adolescents from getting enough sleep. According to an article from the Atlantic in more than 40 states at least 75% of public schools start earlier than 8:30.

It is recommended that you sleep nine hours; however, it’s almost impossible to sleep nine hours every day except for the weekends. If school starts at 7:40, then a student would have to wake up at 6:50 and have an hour to take a shower, get dressed, eat breakfast and head out to school. If you live farther away you might have to wake up earlier just to make it on time; that would mean they would have to head to bed at 8:00 or 9:00.

As a student myself I can tell you that I don’t go to sleep until at least 10:00. It’s unreasonable to think everybody is going to set a bed time in order to make to school on time. We are teenagers with no awareness of time.

The idea of early start times is to have us get information early so we can process it thought out the day; however, that method is flawed. All early start times do is make us tired which means that when we are in class all we think about is sleep and not on the lesson being taught, and if you do decide to get that extra sleep and come late you get a detention which could turn to a Saturday school, or an ACP if you don’t serve it, which creates stress.

If it were up to me I would have school start at 9:00, which would give everyone enough time to sleep, get ready, and arrive early well rested and ready to learn as opposed to tired and stressed out.