How About We Make Late Arrival a Permanent Deal?
With the increase of late arrivals being added to the Moeller calendar this year, students have begun to question: are there any benefits to permanently starting school a bit later? When The Crusader conducted interviews to get the pulse of the faculty on this issue, Eveslage house dean Terri Schaffer doesn’t believe that a later start time could work, but is she right?
Everyone knows that they feel more energetic after a good night’s sleep, but there are many obstacles to that sleep. In a poll taken by 120 Moeller students, 48% said they get 5 hours of sleep per school night. However, 34% of those that responded said homework keeps them up, while 66% said that some form of technology is the reason they stay up later than they should.
Over 50% of responders said they fall asleep more than one time a week during class. When asked if a permanent start time of 9AM would allow them to get more sleep, 54% of students that responded either agreed or strongly agreed.
National Sleep Foundation Logo
From nationalsleepfoundation.org
I interviewed Principal Carl Kremer and had an informative conversation about the prospective idea of a later start. He cited neurological research and said that everything suggests that teens do not get enough sleep. “I've liked the idea for years. All the research indicates that we should do this, it also indicates that adolescents are nocturnal animals.”
A recent poll conducted by the National Sleep Foundation found that 60% of children under the age of 18 complained of being tired during the day, according to their parents, and 15% said they fell asleep at school during the year. “You can say, I'll practice earlier, and I'll go to bed earlier. But the truth is, you don’t go to bed earlier. The truth is, adolescents will go to bed when they go to bed. There are too many distractions like phones that will keep them up at night. The only way to guarantee that adolescents get that extra hour of sleep is to start school an hour later. I’m all for a later start time, if I started my own school that I owned and ran, we would be starting at 9:30, maybe 10. But right now, as a private school relying on 7 different bus systems to transport kids, there are too many logistical hurdles to jump through to be able to accomplish it.”
Dr. Christine Brookbank, Academic Dean, had this to say: “Theoretically I agree, but the problem is, we’ve created such a system, that if you were to start that late, it means practices and extracurriculars can’t start until later. It is difficult to readjust for that. It makes sense, most students are not going to bed until after midnight, and if they’re not getting that good quality of sleep, that effects your retention of knowledge and your ability to stay awake during class.”
When I asked Dr. Brookbank about when we could see a societal change to make a later start time possible, she commented, “If you look back 15 years, there weren’t even computers in schools. Now it seems, that people would be aghast without them. There is way more emphasis nowadays on mental health, proper sleep, school stress, and pressure. So I wouldn’t be surprised that in 10-15 years that high school could be completely different about its schedule.”
Everybody loves to sleep in. While most people agree theoretically on the idea of a later start time for school, practically, it isn’t possible at this time. There would need to be general changes like bus schedules and compliance from most local school districts for this to be a reality for a private-prep school like Moeller.
Also, there are many logistical issues that would need to be resolved first, like how would a parent that starts work at 8 be able to drive their son to school at 9, how would we get athletics practices done at a normal hour if we push school back, and many more. So in conclusion, a later start time may be preferred by most, but at this time it is not feasible.