Essay On School Start Later

As students grow into their teen years, body sleep schedules begin to change. This can be difficult for the average high school student to maintain focus and perform well in school. Studies show that a teen getting up at 7 a.m. is the same as an adult getting up at 4 a.m. School start times should be changed to 8:00 pm or later in high schools because students will have more sleep per night which has shown to result in higher attendance and less tardiness, reduced teenagers involved car crashes and improved academic performance.

The average amount of sleep that teenagers get is around 7 hours every night. According to the Nationwide children’s organization and the CDC adolescents from ages 13-18 need at least 8.5-9.5 hours of sleep per night. The University of Minnesota conducted a study that showed students with a school start time of 8:30 got a minimum of eight hours of sleep per night. In that same study schools that started at 8:35 or later had higher attendance rates and reduced tardiness.

These changes are causing positive change everywhere, in a school that …show more content…
School districts that are against later school start times argue that if they were to switch to a schedule with a later school start time, school would end later making them unable to have time for school sports. While this is an issue, school schedules in many areas have made the shift and haven’t found issues with getting time for sports. Another issue that has come up is that people are worried that the school ending later will limit the student’s access to public resources such as the library. Despite less time being available to students to do work, this shouldn’t be an issue because students have shown to work much more efficiently when not sleep deprived. The amount of time added for a later school start time doesn’t even have to be that much. Even the addition of 30-40 minutes can drastically change the effect on