During school hours, everyone usually lazily gets to class, and sometimes, if they’re late when the door closes, have to get a tardy slip in the office. However, I believe prolonged sleeping hours before school starts will lead to a greater beneficial relationship between both the school and students. Not only that, preventions and reductions could also occur once schools take notice of the situation at hand. Here are some reasons why.
It is no surprise kids aren’t getting enough sleep each night. In fact, almost three out of every four students in the grades 9 to 12 of a high school, aren’t getting the minimum sleep of eight hours that the American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends. This alone is mostly responsible for a broad set of problems such as tardies and full detentions to grades and test scores being lower than usual from impaired memory by a lack of sleep. Red Bluffs High School’s new implementations to improve attendance can reflect this. Mood and emotional problems are also bound to appear sometime. For those who drive cars to school, sleeping late makes it much more likely to fall asleep when waiting for a stoplight. Chronic sleep deprivation may even lead to health factors such as obesity, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer. Of course, the obvious answer is to create a set period of time for the student to stop what they are doing and go to sleep so they can wake up early for school. However, it isn’t that simple. After puberty, kids aren’t as awake in the morning as they were before. In fact, they are almost structured to sleep later due to how the brain reacts to light. This is amplified by the creation of smartphones and other technology that hinders sleep. A survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that during 2017, 43 percent of high-school students spend their time on computers and video games for longer than 3 hours on school days. Social media doesn’t help with its marketing toward young adolescent teens. Ultimately, all of this culminates to less sleep hours and more dangerous situations. This can truly be called a problem and one that may affect schools all over the country.
This leads to how to solve this. In 2014, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended for middle and high schools to start no earlier than 8:30. The results of a multitude of schools following this recommendation has led to more sleep, higher attendance, improving grades, and a significant reduction in car accidents. Considering Red Bluff High School's difficult-to-drive streets, this could very well help to prevent future car crashes from staff and students alike. Not only that, a estimation conducted by the RAND Corporation indicates starting school later would contribute to at least $83 billion to the national economy within a decade by improving educational outcomes and reduced car crashes. The Brookings Institute also calculates that an average increase in lifetime earnings of $17,500 would appear if school started later.
In the end, starting school later would be much more beneficial for our area, and seeing the full library with detention kids may also make you want to wonder if starting school might be a good idea.