Canada, Sweden, and Australia are some of the top countries in education and what do they all have in common? They all start school after 8:00 am unlike the USA. Many students, including me, agree, the school day should start later in the day. This is not just me wanting to sleep in more or get out of school without reason. There are many benefits to starting the school day later, including that many students don’t get enough sleep and suffer health issues because of it so they would be able to get more sleep. They would also be more awake and ready to learn when the day starts and there will be less car crashes. Stay tuned to learn more about how starting school later helps.
As I said earlier, many students don’t get enough sleep which comes with bad side effects. The Center of Disease Control and Prevention said, “Not getting enough sleep is common among high school students and is associated with several health risks including being overweight, drinking alcohol, smoking tobacco, and using drugs, as well as poor academic performance.” Center of Disease Control and Prevention also says “During puberty, adolescents become sleepy later at night and need to sleep later in the morning as a result”. This means that not getting enough sleep can severely negatively impact High Schoolers. They need to sleep in later in the morning to be able to get the proper amount of sleep and stop these terrible effects.
Another reason that starting school later is good is they would also be more awake and ready to learn when the day starts. According to Durrani, “math scores for eighth graders would increase as much as 8 points if schools started one hour later, which many experts say is equivalent to almost a full grade-level increase.” This means that starting school later will improve school testing scores, and academic success.
My final point in trying to convince you that starting school later in the day would help the students is that starting school later will save lives. As stated by the “Later School Start Times Reduce Car Crashes, Improve Teen Safety” article, “The analysis also found that the later school start time was associated with a lower rate of distraction-related accidents.” This means that starting school later will stop many car accidents from happening. This might not seem like a big deal but starting school later will save hundreds of lives all over the country and save many families from having to deal with losing their loved ones.
There are some drawbacks to starting school later in the day as well. Having school later might get in the way of after-school tutoring for the students. Having tutoring is important, but the health of the students in the district should be the School Board’s top priority. There still will be tutoring after school if we start it later, it will just be harder to find. However, without a later start time the lives and health of the students might not still be there.
This is why every district should start the schools in their area later in the day. Starting school later will help the health of your students by letting them get enough sleep. The academic success of the students will also improve along with saving the lives of many students, teachers, parents, and anyone else on the roads when the accidents happen. If you want the start times to change, I would recommend contacting your Board of Education through their email or phone number. Emailing the Emporia Board of Education is the perfect way to change the school day schedule of the EMS and EHS. Do what you can to change the world no matter how small that change is.
