Statistics have proven that older growing children need much more sleep than children at younger ages.  According to the CDC it was recorded that 5 out of 6 high schools and middle schools in the USA start school too early ( before 8:30am). High schoolers and middle schoolers require 8 hours of sleep a night for performance levels to be at a a max. 40% of these students get 6 or less hours of sleep a night.

I spoke with the school nurse and a few students to get thoughts of school times. I gave them a simple idea and proposed a question. What is the thought on school start time for us in the high school and do you think we should be looking towards changing the times between the high school and plains school?

The first student I spoke with is Nicole Descheneaux. She brought up a good point on how some students will need to be home for younger siblings after school and it may be hard for some students with switching times due to the fact that we would be out later that the younger kids and then no one would be there to get them off the bus and watch them until parents get home. Quote “Changing the time probably wouldn’t work because what if people have siblings that need to be watched no one would be there for them.”

The next student I interviewed was Zoe Rowland-Simpson. Another good point was brought up about sports and work. Zoe part takes in softball and said that if the start and end times were messed around with that the time of sports would be pushed back. It would be hard to fit in sports after school but also find the time for family time as well as homework. If you add a job on top of that it would be nearly impossible to be able to accomplish all of that after school. Quote “ If school time was changed I think sports would be messed with and I wouldn’t have time for my job and a sport too. It would just be to hard!”

The last person I spoke to was nurse Sawyer. She has a lot of good ideas however she agreed on the school start time to be later. “ I believe our students here at SHHS would do much better if we looked at switching the times because sleep is very important. Kids must get into a routine and stick with it to get 7 hours of sleep a night. I do think though if the times are switched that kids will take advantage of it and they will go to bed even later and then not get enough sleep.” Nurse Sawyer also stated that performance levels would be much better if high schoolers got more sleep.

Overall it seems to be a very controversial topic that would need to have a lot of consideration put into the making and thinking of the project. Moral of the story is for students to try and get at least 8 hours of sleep a night to feel the best they can as well as shine through as the best student they can be.
Bogalhas can be reached at [email protected]