Later School Start Times Essay

Words: 456
Pages: 2

In today’s world, people are wondering how they can make the school system smarter, more practical, and more efficient. Over the past few years, the concept of later school start times has intrigued many and been brought to school boards’ attentions around the country. Rather than 8:00-8:15, class would begin at 8:30-9:30. The difference isn’t significant, but sleep experts say this can improve academic performance, focus, and alertness. Those opposing believe later school start times are a hassle for parents and extracurriculars and create more cons than pros. Starting school at a later time in the day is a highly arguable topic. One benefit of later times for schools is academics and learning would increase positively. Kids remember the …show more content…
A lot of accidents involving teens occur on the way, or coming from school. Starting school at a later time would better coordinate the teen’s natural sleep rhythm. Accidents are more common in the mornings when teens are still not quite fully awake (Chen). This means that later school start times are not only better for improving academics, but are safer as well. Although later school start times have good benefits, they also have some disadvantages. One problem that schools have upon changing to this schedule is that extracurriculars are often set aside. Kids will also be staying up even later at night to finish schoolwork. The later times wouldn’t just impact that school, but the entire district (Morin). Even with a regular schedule, students struggle to balance extracurriculars and homework (Morgan). A second disadvantage is the conflict of parents and their work schedules. Child care would become a problem, especially with elementary kids. Most jobs start before 9 am, so kids would have to get used to being alone in the mornings and getting ready without parent supervision. Parents would have to spend money on childcare which can be expensive, and inconvenient