Early school start time is bad for students

<p>My son’s school bus picks him up at 6:40 around the corner from our house. It is a very short walk, but I have had to adjust my work schedule to scream him down the block otherwise he would miss the bus every day because he is so not a morning person. I’m sure my neighbors love me.</p>

<p>Is this really new news? These schedules are often dictated by the bus companies, who the districts are PAYING. Seems kind of unfair to the districts to pay to get an unideal schedule. They should just tell the bus companies to make it work or beat it. </p>

<p>No, this is not new news. I remember this story being news when my older kids were in Kindergarten. It seems to get studied every ten years or so for some reason. </p>

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The policy of our school district is no bus for within 2 miles from school. So they expect kids to walk up to 2 miles even if there is ice and snow in winter. So you are also lucky to walk only 1 mile on ice/snow. So yes, we are lucky that it is JUST one mile to walk to the closest bus stop. But we choose to carpool with neighbors.</p>

<p>For those who have the zero hour option should consider yourself very lucky. My school district has been trying to cut the 7th hour since 2 years ago. First they cancelled the bus after 7th hour. Then they tried to charge additional money to those who take 7th hour. Now they just have limited quote that at least half of the students could not have 7th hours even if they want to.</p>

<p>Another obstacle to change is that if elementary school kids start earlier, they also get out earlier–which means longer after-school care for many of them. That’s a huge expense for working families.</p>

<p>Actually, elementary schools in my district start at 8:45 AM a long long time ago. But parents who go to work early have to drop them early at day care centers. These centers drop the kids at school later.</p>

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I see now that I left out an important word (“aren’t”). The sentence should read: Why aren’t the majority’s needs (the students who don’t participate in sports) more important than the minority’s needs (the students who play sports? </p>

<p>If young kids get out earlier they will have more time in after school care but do those programs typically charge by the hour? None that we ever used did, so another hour in aftercare wouldn’t have cost us more. </p>

<p>Now we did have to pay more to use before care in some years. </p>

<p>We were fortunate to have a very low cost program run by the Y at our school for most of elementary. So the extra cost was not much. </p>

<p>Here, after school care is by the hour and you have to get the kid there, unless the particular school has care.</p>

<p>Perhaps the majority of kids aren’t in sports, but when you add in other ECs, after school jobs, and other similar things, perhaps you don’t have a clear majority of people who would prefer a later start.</p>

<p>I think the problem can be solved if there are some compromises and creative solutions.</p>

<p>After school elementary care in our district is in the school building and is pretty reasonable/flat rate based on how many days you use (not hours used). Like $200/mo for 5 days a week per month. They do before school care too for something like $80/mo. Theoretically you could have your kids there from 6 am-6:30 pm (with school in between) for under $300/mo. </p>

<p>It isn’t just about # of hours of sleep, MiamiDAP, its about when certain hormones are released, and many other factors. You question who funds the studies? Is the CDC not an acceptable source? <a href=“http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/11299/162769/1/Impact%20of%20Later%20Start%20Time%20Final%20Report.pdf”>http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/11299/162769/1/Impact%20of%20Later%20Start%20Time%20Final%20Report.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>But since you have shared multiple times that you don’t go to doctors and don’t see the need for these health checks, then maybe we shouldn’t expect you to get it.</p>

<p>First, I believe the studies, so please don’t put me in the study denial category. However, when my parents’ generation had to be up at the crack of dawn to do farm chores before going off to school, they got up earlier, were ready to crash in bed by 9:00, and got plenty of sleep. Then again, they did enough physical labor to be exhausted when they went to bed, and there weren’t TVs, computers, and cell phones to distract them.</p>

<p>The objections around here to a later high school schedule are:

  1. Buses running multiple routes.
  2. Extracurricular activities. It’s not just sports. It’s play rehearsals, club meetings and projects, and after-school tutoring. Many students stay after school several days a week until 5:00 or so. A later start time would push that back into supper.
  3. After-school jobs.
  4. Child care. Many teenagers care for their younger siblings until their parents get home from work. The parents want the teens to get out first so they can pick up their brothers and sisters or meet them at the bus stop.</p>

<p>My guess is that almost every student in our high school is either in category 2, 3, or 4. As long as that is the case, start times will not be moved. I do like the zero hour option.</p>

<p>Well, I don’t get it, either. Although i do think teens are probably wired to go to bed late. that does not make going to bed earlier impossible. And, they will survive getting up an hour earlier just the way they will survive all-night study sessions and parties.Not optimal is just not that big a problem, imho. </p>

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<p>Yes, but in the current atmosphere of doing everything possible to promote academic achievement, I can’t help but wonder how much academic achievement would improve if high school students were able to attend school and sleep at the times of day that are optimal for them.</p>

<p>For as often this is said, as often parents complain, when given a choice they continue to opt for early start. At least that is what we’ve seen in our area. My D’s first high school started at 7:15. It was a magnet in which the majority of kids were busing or driving in. Our county is widespread so we’re talking hour long commutes and even longer in traffic for most of the students. However, when the magnet put it up for a vote, the majority of parents voted to keep the early time due to after school activities. Our local public starts at 7:30 and also offered a later start that was voted down by parents. Go figure.</p>

<p>Outside those two years at 7:15 am (which were hell) my kids never started earlier than 8:30 all through their schooling. D moved to middle college where high school portion started at 9 am and up to the kids to schedule the rest at the college. S is at a charter that starts at 8:40 am and all the after school activities are built into the daily schedule. When they are released at 3:40, they’ve already had their sports practices and club meetings etc… They also don’t believe in overloading with homework so there is still plenty of time for outside of school activities.</p>

<p>The issue at hand is a very real one, but people have laid out quite nicely why it is hard to change it. Teenagers are hardwired to go to bed late, their circadian rhythms are different than younger kids and adults, yet teen years are also years when they need a lot of sleep. I saw that with my S, who was fortunately homeschooled through the High School years, the way his patterns worked, and I also saw his friends who went to school and what they went through. The early schedules were originally adopted when were were more a rural country and it fit the habits of kids of farms, who had chores to do early then had to come home to help. These days, it often is that if there are two parents, both work, and that makes coordination difficult. We can talk about what our grandparents did, and it is all great and good to think that the kids are up late texting or playing a game or on facebook or something, but the reality is that the kids today are holding down academic and EC pressure our grandparents didn’t face. People claim schools aren 't rigorous enough, yet if you looked at what our grandparents studied in school, it wasn’t nearly as rigorous (in part because most came right home, didn’t have the EC’s…and to be honest, what percentage of kids in our grandparents era went to college?). Yeah, I have seen those things showing what kids studied in 1890, how few people today can answer it, but a lot of that isn’t rigor, it is facts and such that today are considered useless…our grandparents weren’t taking college level science and math courses for the most part, they weren’t taking that kind of load (and if you want proof, think about what happened in 1957, after Sputnik, when suddenly they figured out US schools were not great with science and math, which was part hype, but also had a lot of truth to it). </p>

<p>Kids today face pressures we didn’t, and our grandparents certainly didn’t. Most of them are growing up with two parents working, and they face a level of stress and emphasis on academics that quite honestly didn’t exist to that level when I was growing up, between the mania for AP classes, the mania for EC’s, the pressure to get into the ‘right school’, they are totally new, and the kids IME are up late night, not because they are texting and whatnot, but rather to finish the workload they are given, the homework loads are ridiculous as they exist, and with all the other things in their lives, it isn’t time management, it is the reality of their lives. </p>

<p>“However, when my parents’ generation had to be up at the crack of dawn to do farm chores before going off to school, they got up earlier, were ready to crash in bed by 9:00, and got plenty of sleep. Then again, they did enough physical labor to be exhausted when they went to bed, and there weren’t TVs, computers, and cell phones to distract them.”</p>

<p>This.^^^</p>

<p>This topic is heating up in my district. While I agree in theory that teens’ brains are wired to sleep later than adults, I can’t help but also believe that our teens just aren’t tired because most of them haven’t done anything physical all day, and then spend their evenings staring at lighted screens of one kind or another.</p>

<p>I don’t know that simply changing the school start time will solve the real problems, which are lack of exercise and too many brightly lit screens.</p>

<p>Not to sound like Bill Cosby (Up hill… Both ways) but there was no bus service within the city limits in my home town. And nobody’s parents were driving their kids to and fro. Occasional juniors and seniors had cars, but it was by no means universal. I walked both ways almost every day through high school. Without participating in any sports, I walked 4 miles a day. And most of us rode our bikes everywhere whenever the roads weren’t snow covered. And there were a lot of family dairy farms back then. Those kids had chores before and after school. We were tired at the end of the day. </p>