How school start times affect everyone involved

Let's get personal.

I have a teaching degree and extended family jam-packed full of teachers. Clearly, I have a deep respect for education. However, I've traded teaching for full-time freelance work and I have no children yet. Considering I'm not a teacher or parent, you may wonder why I even care about a topic like school start times.

Believe it or not, these types of legal decisions affect you even if you don't work at schools or have children in them. For example, about one male out of every 35 that graduates from high school ends up in jail or juvenile detention. For dropouts, the rate is one in 10. Youth education affects the masses and changes in it can have ripple effects that can be positive or negative.

Here's the deal.

California is currently awaiting a decision from Governor Jerry Brown on whether or not he will pass a bill requiring all middle and high schools to have a start time of 8:30 am or later. Currently, more than 80% of California schools start earlier. He has until the end of the month to decide, and if he signs it, schools have until 2021 to implement the new law. It will undoubtedly be a difficult decision as both proponents and dissenters are vocal and passionate.

If I've learned a single lesson in my life, it's that everything in life is more complex than it appears at first glance. It would be simple to pick a side on the debate and stick to it. However, you're better off learning the arguments of both sides before forming an opinion.

A look at the possible negatives.

Among the major groups against the bill are the California Teachers Association, California School Boards Association, California Association of School Business Officials, Association of California School Administrators, and the California Association of Suburban Schools. They believe individual schools have different needs and should maintain the choice to start school days whenever they see fit.

According to Nancy Chaires Espinoza, a legislative advocate for the California School Boards Association,

“Without addressing our state’s severely underfunded school transportation and our lack of funding for before-school programs, the bill will disproportionately burden working families.”

Let's say you currently drop your children off at school each morning before heading to work. Suddenly school starts half an hour later. Likely you drop your child off at the same time you used to, but now they wait around longer before school and are even more tired by the time school finally ends.

Some families can afford alternate transportation options or can change their schedules, but this is definitely not a possibility for all families. This problem could be fixed (at least in part) by purchasing more school buses, but those aren't cheap.

After school extracurricular activities would also be affected. When I was in high school, I joined an intense amount of clubs and teams. In my opinion, they helped me grow mentally, physically, and creatively. School days that end later mean sporting events and club meetings end later as well. This could result in a loss of valuable evening family time.

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A look at the possible positives.

Students need sleep that aligns with their natural circadian rhythms and scientific studies back this up. According to a CBS interview with sleep expert Matthew Walker, less than three percent of youth receive the recommended nine hours of sleep per night. It's not a simple matter of taking the time they need to wake up in the morning and calculating a bedtime nine hours earlier. As Dr. Carol Ash explains about adolescents,

"Their brains are different. Melatonin gets released later in children. And also the pressure to fall asleep is less. So it's harder for them to fall asleep at night, so they can't go to bed earlier. [They're] just physiologically different."

So besides the annoyingness of drowsiness, what benefits are there to students getting more sleep? Increased alertness would certainly improve the academic performance of children. It's simple: when you're tired you aren't as mentally sharp. Because this also applies to driving when you're exhausted, this could make high school students transporting themselves to and from school drive more safely. Besides, they might not be as rushed in the morning and drive slower.

It could also be monetarily beneficial to schools. According to Assemblyman Jay Obernolte, delaying school start times "is the single most cost-effective thing we can do to improve high school graduation rates." Possibly most important is the impact more sleep would have on the health of today's youth. Insufficient sleep can contribute to obesity and hypertension, among other health issues. In the United States, almost one in three children or teens are overweight or obese. If you're obese as a kid, there's an 80% chance you'll remain so your entire life.

Let's talk comparisons.

A great way to predict the results of an experiment is to look at results from others. California schools are not the only ones to consider delaying school start times. There are schools in several states that have already implemented start times of 8:30 am or later. While results with elementary schools are sometimes mixed, the results for starting middle schools and high schools later have been mostly positive.

When schools change to a later beginning time, the students tend to earn higher grades, get better scores on standardized tests, and have higher attendance rates. In some areas, the changed time for beginning each school day has even reduced teen car crashes by up to 70%.

But why just compare start times within the United States? Some countries, such as Brazil, China, and Ghana start school days earlier than the U.S. on average. Others start later. Finland, which consistently ranks as having one of the best education systems in the world, doesn't begin the school day until 9 am. Australia boasts a 9 am start time as well.

The overall length of the school day differs depending on what country you're in. In some locations, such as Switzerland and Morocco, children have long lunch breaks where they head home to eat with their families. These comparisons are as useful as they are interesting when creating policy. As with business, it can be an excellent strategy to see who's performing best and to copy their methods.

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Wrapping it up.

School policy decisions affect us all. If we respect and care about our education systems (which we should), then it's essential to be updated about what is happening with them. Regardless of the decision made, I'm glad that administrators are looking into scientific ways to improve education rather than simply sticking with the status quo. The better today's youth are educated, the brighter everyone's future will be.