There are few people who enjoy waking up early and tired. High schoolers definitely are not these people. Middle and high school students need more sleep in order to be prepared for school. In 2022, California became the first state in the country to mandate later school start times Middle schools are not allowed to start before eight, and high schools are not allowed to start before 8:30. This upcoming school year, Aspen Elementary, Aspen Middle, and Aspen High schools all are going to start at eight in the morning.
Many parents, educators, and leaders believe that later start times will provide challenges in terms of operations and logistics. There is also the issue of dealing with the schedules of working parents. Later start times lead to working parents having to readjust their schedules to fit with the school times of their children. Parents are not always able to readjust their schedules, which leads to them having to drop their children off early. This can be unsafe for the kids if the school is not open yet. Later start times also push back athletic practices and after-school activities.
The main operational and logistical challenge that schools such as Aspen face is school buses. Different bus routes caused by varying school start times are seen as unnecessary by administrators and parents. However, staggered bus routes lead to less crowded buses, encouraging students to ride the bus and reducing traffic around school start times. Staggered bus routes also allow elementary school students to get home earlier when they get out earlier because of their shortened requirements. Currently, children at Aspen Elementary School get released at three. Their buses leave at 3:15 and are able to complete their routes and return to campus in order to leave at four with middle and high school students. However, the new times propose releasing elementary students at 3:15 and high school students at 3:25. This ten-minute gap is not nearly enough for buses to complete their routes. Currently, buses leave 15 minutes after school is dismissed in order to give children time to board. This means that the buses would not leave until 3:40. The elementary school students would have to sit on their bus for 25 minutes waiting to go home after their long school day. This long wait time is inefficient and will be difficult for elementary school students to deal with, especially when they just want to go home. Young kids often have trouble sitting still, so it will be very difficult to keep them entertained and behaved while waiting for the high school to get released.
One of the most universally recognized recovery strategies for athletics is sleep. Teenagers are athletes too, and they struggle to get enough sleep at an early start when they naturally go to bed later. Insufficient sleep is associated with diminished performance athletically and in general. A lack of sleep is associated with an increased risk of sports injuries in teenagers. Diminished sleep is shown to affect reaction times, accuracy, and hand-eye coordination, which leads teenage athletes to be more prone to making risky decisions that could injure them. In contrast, an increase in sleep is shown to correlate with peak athletic performance as well as faster reaction times. There is serious scientific evidence that loss of sleep negatively affects almost every aspect of human capability and performance. These include reductions in judgment and decision-making, reaction time, attention, memory, communication, and mood. There is clear evidence that a decrease in sleep caused by earlier start times has negative effects on athletic performance and increases the risk of athletic injuries.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, middle and high schools should start at 8:30 or later in order for students to get the sleep they need. Students without enough sleep are more likely to have higher rates of depression, as well as a lowered performance in school. A study conducted by public schools in Seattle, in which middle and high school start times were moved from 7:50 to 8:45, showed that students achieved a median increase of 34 minutes of sleep a night. The study also found that students did not stay up later but rather slept in later, which corresponds with the circadian rhythms of adolescents. Research has shown that the circadian rhythms of adolescents are very different from those of adults. This explains why you get tired when you do and why you are more tired at certain times of the day. The onset of puberty leads to the circadian rhythms of teenagers extending, leading to them being tired and going to bed later at night. To compare the circadian rhythms of adults and teenagers, it is said that a teenager waking up at 7:30 is akin to how active and alert an adult is after waking up at 5:30. Another study conducted in a biology class at two high schools found that when school start times were pushed back, the students would get more sleep resulting in final grades being on average 4.5% higher for students with later start times. The data shows that the vastly different circadian rhythms of teenagers result in less sleep during earlier start times and more sleep during later start times. An increase in sleep is shown to boost academic performance as well as lower rates of depression. Aspen School District should consider changing the start time of the high school. They should follow California’s lead and change the start time to 8:30 in order to help students get more sleep every night.
