Let’s be real here: everybody hates waking up super early in the morning to go to school. Ever since elementary school, children have always woken up early. As these children advance to different grades from year to year, these times start to get earlier and the days start to get longer. By the time high school rolls around, teenagers struggle to wake up on time and fall asleep in class occasionally. While this is frustrating for teachers and even parents, this is not an uncommon experience for adolescents in the United States. Hudson High School should develop the Wednesday explorer period schedule everyday during the school week (9:30 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.), because when school starts later, teenagers get more sleep. When students get more sleep, the better their mental and physical health is, their academic outcomes improve, and there is a reduced risk of car accidents and injuries.
For the past decade, experts have stated that teenagers need eight to ten hours of sleep per night, but with their biologically wired brains, 70% of high schoolers don’t get enough sleep on school nights according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Adolescents who are able to obtain at least eight hours of sleep, say that they are less likely to be depressed and use less caffeine throughout the day. “Kids are more likely to eat breakfast, and teachers find kids smiling and awake to learn in the first period,” quotes Elinore Boeke, communications director for Start School Later. With these teenagers getting the beneficial amount of sleep they need, it establishes that starting school later will better their mental and physical health.
Not only do teens have better health, but their academic outcomes have greatly improved during school with later starts. A study by economics professor Finley Edwards in Wake County, NC, has proven that starting school even just an hour later raises test scores, with an average of two percentile points in math and one and a half points in English. These effects were larger for the lower-performing students. If these students have already increased academically this amazing and quick, it can’t be imagined how much the high schoolers of Hudson would develop if they had a late start every week.
There will always be teen car accidents no matter what, but multiple studies have shown that distracted driving crash rates drop significantly with delayed school start times. Boeke also states that getting a good night’s sleep at the right time has been shown to improve reaction time. Not only does this relate to reacting faster when driving a car, but it has to do with the improvement of student athletes reaction time and accuracy. With more sleep with these later starts, these athletes have significantly lessened their risk of injury.
Although the concept of late start times has many benefits for students, some school districts are concerned with the way later start times impose a hardship on too many working families. Al Mijares, Orange County Superintendent of Schools, explains, “Even with later start times, many of these parents will still have to drop their kids off at school before they go to work.” However, the National Sleep Foundation has worked to resolve this problem by flipping elementary and high school start times. This result requires no extra transportation for buses and drivers; it just changes the order of pickups. This routine also seems to be more appropriate to the sleep schedules of elementary school students because young children gravitate toward waking up earlier in the morning.
This fall, California became the first state in the United States to mandate late start times with public high schools. They are required to start classes no earlier than 8:30 a.m. Supporters say the change will not only let California teens get more sleep, but will bring many other important benefits. As stated, these important benefits include improvement of health, grades and tardiness, and students will be less prone to future car accidents. Ohio can potentially be the second state to order these late start times, and let’s start with the Hudson City Schools District. Every day of the week for the Hudson High School, 9:30 a.m. should be the start time and the dismissal time should be at 3:00 p.m. It will indeed take awhile for Hudson City Schools to compromise this adoption, but there is no doubt that this change will help students and even the teachers in the long run.
