No question the world has changed its habits in 5 decades, but the ONE big thing creating massive pushback in the 70’s has not changed: school start times, requiring kids to walk out the front door in the dark. Once next January rolls around on DST, the 'rents will still be up in arms. (Sure, schools could push start times back an hour, and they probably will, but that is not part of the discussion, yet.)
fwiw: personally have no dog in this fight, since I don’t care one way or another. All DST is fine with me, as is the current spring forward, fall back. (Used to run a marathon on the fall back Sunday, so appreciated the extra hour of rest, but my marathon days are likely over.)
They are voting on changing the start times here to much later, especially for teens. If they change the teen starting time, they have to change elementary to earlier in order to share the buses.
My kids always started at 8 am (K-5, middle (one started at 7:30), and then freshman and soph years in hs. We moved when they were sophomores and they started at 9:15. It was awful. All they did was stay up later and talk on the phone/computer. They preferred going at 8. When they were at 9:15, school went until 4, so athletic practice were from 4-6.
I’m voting NOT to change start times for school.
I’d also prefer to keep DST because I don’t like walking to the bus in the dark, as I have returned to this week. I have to go by several tent cities and it is a little scary in the dark.
If they change the Teen start times to later in the morning, they will also need to do some huge adjustments to the after school sports schedule. This has been attempted around here…but all secondary schools were NOT on board with a later start time…and after school sports would have been hugely impacted.
Not to stray too far off-topic but our district just went through the whole later start time change debate last year. It was voted down. Turned out to be a complete waste of time, money and energy. The transportation costs alone would have been nearly $1M/ year for the additional buses and bus routes. After school everything would have been a mess especially sports practices and matches with other districts.
Our district has had later start times for decades and it seems to work well. My kids went to a charter with an 8:15 start time but the local high schools start at 8:55. Elementary starts at 7:50 and I believe middle school starts at 8:30. Works fine around here. Been this way at least 10 years since my youngest was in elementary.
Philadelphia public schools just announced they are moving to a universal 9 am start time for all high schools beginning next fall (current start times are in the 7:30 range but differ from school to school.)
I realize that educators are trying to do the right thing by moving back start times, but I’d bet unlimited amount of money that the teenagers will just stay up an hour later in the age of social media. A later start time will not result in more sleep. Just ain’t gonna happen.
I can assure you this is what happens. My kids, who needed a LOT of sleep as teens, just stayed up later when they switched to a 9:15 start. They had always gone to bed at 9 or at the latest 10, but now were up to or past 11. Everything was just shifted to later - sports practice, theater, after school jobs. Not one second of extra sleep.
Definitely not the case with my kids. They have never in their lives willingly gone to bed at 9 or 10 so a later start helps a lot. They even slept in as babies, none of that getting up at 5am around here. D22’s school starts at 8:15 except on late start days for snow or ice and she gets so much more sleep on those days. And it is hard to imagine any of D22’s high school friends going to bed at 9!
Same in my house. My D is not going to bed before midnight regardless of what time she has to get up. Honestly, I’m the same way. I fought to get her to go to bed at a decent hour all through elementary school, but at some point it is up to them. Remote school was terrible, but it did mean for the first time since she started middle school she was actually well rested (MS & HS start at 7:45 here, and she has to be there at 7:00 several days a week for band/chorus). A later start time for the HS would have been transformative for her (and me). I don’t think she would have necessarily stayed up any later than she does now.
I honestly can’t recall a single high school student telling me they went to bed at 9pm or close to it. I know of several who had jobs working until then, then had to do homework, and plenty more who just plain socialized until late. Typical bedtime seemed to be between 11 and midnight.
Eons ago when I was in high school my bedtime was supposed to be 10:30, but that often got fudged.
My kids stayed up late when they were in pre-school because of the 2 hour nap. The day they started K, they slept from 7 pm to 7 am, and often took a 3 hour catch up nap on weekends. They played HARD. One daughter started sleeping in her school uniform so she could get an extra 5 minutes of sleep in the morning. In middle school, they usually were in bed by 9 and we left the house at 7:10 to get to school. They needed a lot of sleep.
When we moved to the 9:15 start school, my daughter would often get up at 6 to go work out at the gym and be back by 7 because I had to leave for the office (one car family). I 'd find her up at 7 on a Sunday morning doing homework because she had lacrosse games all day.
She goes to work at about 6 every morning now. Her sister opens at 4 am at Starbucks 2 mornings per week.
Nothing in terms of school start times or daylight savings/standard time will make everyone happy. Night owls, early risers, full sleepers, sleep deprived, etc.
Teens are biologically programed to go to sleep later and wake up later. School times used to accommodate this biology…my HS started at 8:30. Then again, we weren’t expected to play competitive sports year round, have EC 's which which cure cancer or solve the worlds problems between the last period and the dinner hour.
’ Both the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend that both middle and high schools begin no earlier than 8:30 a.m.5 Both organizations want to ensure students get adequate sleep so that they are alert and prepared to learn at school.
Biology plays a large factor in the sleep cycles of children and adolescents. Around the beginning of puberty, most adolescents experience later sleep onset and wake times, also called “phase delay”. This phase delay can shift the body’s internal clock back by up to two hours. As a result, the average teenager cannot fall asleep until 11:00 p.m. and would do best waking up at 8:00 a.m. or even later.’
My kids had 10pm bedtime when they lived at home. They stayed up later when they were in college, but reverted back once they started working. D1 has a baby now. She keeps the baby on a fairly rigid sleep regiment. The baby (13 Mon old) sleeps from 7pm to 7am with a 2 hr nap.
