High schools should consider starting later

High school students have to get to school at 7:20am, this is early for kids that are staying up later, have athletics after school, and have homework or study for upcoming tests. Wauconda High school starting time is at 7:20 am, Monday- Friday. All around the area schools have pushed their start times back one hour to benefit their students. Libertyville, Lake Zurich, Carmel Catholic, Grayslake North, Grayslake Central and Arlington Heights all start school around 8:15 but end at 3:30. This means that Wauconda is one of the only schools in the area to start earlier. 

In addition, It has been shown that waking up later improves mental and physical health, academic outcomes, and attendance. In the article Help your teens recharge with sleep states, “The majority of teenagers do not get the recommended 8 to 10 hours of sleep. Inadequate sleep can lead to countless negative health consequences that impact students’ ability to learn” (Jonathan Paprocki). Sleep is crucial for teens to get since it repairs the muscles, fends off infections, and helps the body function properly. It would also make students more alert when coming in for class and help improve grades and attendance. It was also shown in the article, “The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends teenagers, ages 13 to 18, should regularly sleep 8 to 10 hours per night for good health. Students without enough sleep are more likely to suffer from symptoms of depression, perform poorly in school, and not engage in daily physical activity“ (Jonathan Paprocki). Just getting an extra 40 minutes of sleep might end up helping multiple students in the long run. Sleep determines how students go about their daily lives, but if they aren’t being active or their performance in school is poor it will have a negative impact in their life long term. 

On the contrary, high schools haven’t taken the initiative in pushing school time back because there might be some downsides of it too. First and foremost is transportation. Most bus drivers are already doing two pickups and drop offs per day. One for the High School kids and one for the younger kids. Pushing start times back could be a logistical nightmare and place more cost on the district to hire more drivers. They would have to switch the elementary schools to go in earlier since they aren’t affected by the early mornings. This would solve the problems and help high schoolers, but it might add more problems with elementary schoolers. This would be difficult to do since parents might not be able to drop or pick up their children from school. More transportation and after school care might have to go into place for the elementary school since they get out of school so much earlier than normal. Co-author Sarah Crittenden Fuller, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said, “We found earlier start times for elementary schoolers do not have the same negative effects as they do for middle and high schoolers.” Even though starting earlier might not have any negative effects on the children it will still affect the high schoolers. After school extracurriculars would be pushed back and might make it harder to have games, meetings, and practices. In the article Later school start times are more popular,  “Many educators, district leaders, and parents believe the shift will present significant operational and logistical challenges, complicate the scheduling of after-school extra-curricular activities, and disrupt the schedules of working parents’” (Tim Walker). This is suggesting that even though there are benefits of pushing the high school back there are also negatives that might have a bigger impact. 

Even though there are many positives there are also many negatives of pushing back the high school start time. Wauconda high school should consider all the possible outcomes and benefits of starting school later. There are so many great benefits that may help the school in the long run and help students perform better in school. It may take a while to get used to, but once adjusted, it will be easy for the students to get up for school and be more alert. This switch will help so many students now and in their futures.