Persuasive Essay On School Start Time

Words: 776
Pages: 4

School Start Times

Tired. It is a word that slips out of every high schoolers mouth more than once a day. The average high schooler gets only 7 hours of sleep, while some drag through the day on only two hours (Backgrounder). While the lack of sleep can be fixed by just going to bed earlier, for many teens this “fix” is impossible. Some schools in America require students be at school by 7 AM; and 40% of high schools start at 8 AM (Mindell). With early start times, students can not get enough sleep and it can impact many other aspects of their lives in and outside of school. As a country, we need to make the start time for schools later in the morning; the best start time would be 9:30 AM. This will increase their overall health and safety because they are able to make better choices and not constantly be tired. The school will have a better overall attendance rate because students are no longer sleeping past their alarm clocks, resulting in more attentive students; with more attentive students the schools can produce higher test scores. Health and safety should be the school's number one priority for its students. This is not clear when schools force students to be up by as early as 5 AM in order to get to school on time. Some students endure a
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Students will also be less likely to fall asleep in class. A school district in Colorado showed that just by moving the starting time 45 minutes later, they observed less tardiness and a better overall school attendance (Pannoni). Many people comment about how if their start time is later that it will impact sports, which won’t allow the students more time to sleep. The school in Colorado’s superintendent actually observed no change to after school activities; he even observed happier students and students who were more likely to be involved in activities. If students attend school, the school is more likely to see an increase in attentive