Parents have been going through the trouble of waking their high school students up for decades. From California to Connecticut, high schools have often considered changing the start time for high schools. However, many students are engaged in after school activities, prevents high schools from changing the start time.
At Woodland Regional High School, in New Haven County Connecticut, teachers and students each chimed in their opinion on the matter. As you would imagine, teachers and students each had mixed feelings about the start time of 7:35.
One senior, Emma Longo, said that many students need the extra sleep due to the amount of activities they have going on after school. “For students who work or have after school activities like Student Government, or any club or sport where they are going to be out late or not having enough time to do their homework, it would be beneficial for them to have extra time in the morning to either sleep or get extra work done before the school day starts,” said Longo.
Like Longo’s opinion, history teacher Christopher Tomlin has seen that students tend to get more engaged later in the day. “The first block class most of the time does not have those in depth conversations that I see in third block, in fourth block. They’re dragging, they’re never quite as exciting, or even on their part, they’re never quite as engaged as the third and fourth block classes,” said Tomlin.
Some teachers at Woodland, disagreed with what Tomlin had to say. Even though students are not as engaged, teachers like AP English teacher Nancy Manning believes students already get home late enough if they are involved in extracurricular activities. “I think a lot of students are on activities after school, and a lot of students work after school, it would throw off their schedule. I think students need to go to bed earlier, that’s the thing,” said Manning.
If the high school start time was pushed back an hour, then students would be staying up later to complete their homework. As Woodland’s softball coach and AP Spanish teacher Loren Luddy said, students already struggle completing their homework on time. “The only conflict I do see is when are the students getting their homework done? Because if they are in school later, does that mean they’re still not going to do their homework before practice, so they’re still not going to do it right away when they get home from practice? Are they still going to stay up too late?” said Luddy.
If students stayed up later to complete homework, then there is a good chance that starting school later would not benefit them, they would only stay up an extra hour later completing school work anyway.
In California, there was a bill passed in Congress that changed the start time to 8:35 statewide. However, the governor of California, Jerry Brown, vetoed the Bill. He made this decision because he thought school start times should be settled at a local level, instead of a statewide decision.
Whether it is politics, teachers, or students, the debate rages on as high school students are still incredibly difficult to get up in the morning.
