Does school start too early?

Study shows that starting school early affects learning and students need to have the chance to sleep more so students can have more just of a productive day. It also makes it more difficult for students to pay attention in class and grades can go down.

According to the Sleep Foundation, not getting enough sleep can cause an increase in depressive symptoms and can cause a greater chance of unhealthy behavior. It can also cause an increased risk of motor vehicle accidents.

School starting at later times can support the biological needs of adolescents and can increase the amount of sleep they get according to Sleep Foundation. Some of the benefits of school starting at later times are improved attendance and decreased tardiness. Also, it can improve grades, fewer occurrences of students falling asleep in class and fewer disciplinary issues. As you can see there are many benefits of school starting at later times but not just that according to sleep foundation, there was a decline of motor vehicle crashes by 16.5 percent after school time was pushed back by an hour.

This also leads to bad performance in school, and it also affects a student’s mental and physical health. I personally due struggle being late and staying awake for school. It also leads to me being absent at some of my periods because I’m just too tired to get up and go to school.

PHS junior Saul Beltran: “going to school early affects me mentally because of the previous day, not only do we have to wake up early, but we also must wake up early the next morning. We have do schoolwork and other responsibilities at home that exhausts me, physically sometimes I doze off in class due to being tired and not having enough sleep, the previous day I could’ve been studying at night and not had enough sleep to properly function the next day.”

PHS junior Hector Ramirez: “it affects me by going to school tired and not being motivated because of how early school is. It affects me physically because my body is not getting enough rest to wake up at 6 am every day.”

According to the University of Rochester Medical Center, teenagers with school starting times before 8:30 am may be at a particular risk of experiencing depression and anxiety due to compromised sleep quality according to a recent URMC study. Stress also plays a big part in lack of sleep. Students have assignments to be completed and also have many things outside of school which as a student myself is hard to do at the same time and trying to get everything done is a lot of stress which causes students not to get enough sleep in order to complete these things that have to be done

Students can also get sleep deprivation. This also is one of many reasons students aren’t focused enough or woke enough to be paying attention due to the lack of sleep. Pushing school to start an hour later can really make a difference not just in attendance but also mental and physical health. Many studies have proven that school starting later can really have beneficial effects on students.

As one can see, school starting early affects a student’s mental health and their physical being. Many students are sleep deprived and do not have the energy to focus on school because they are so tired and don’t have enough sleep to really pay attention in class. These are just some of the many reasons why school shouldn’t start so early.