Should Students Go To School Later in the Day

By: Joshua Racks

     Students in school should start later for reasons being students have many things to do after school and including the homework given by these teachers is only one part. I state this for one main reason being students always show up to school tired and drowsy in the morning.

     According to the American Psychological Association In 2021, nearly 70% of 9th graders, and 83.5% of 12th graders, failed to get enough sleep. You can see the difference it makes on teens especially in high school.

     Between 2009 and 2021, the percentage of high school students who did not get enough sleep increased from 69% to 77%, according to data from the CDC National Youth Risk Behavior Surveys. Reasons being school work and school related things.

     According to a student from Benicia High School, she agrees that schools should start later to make sure kids don’t have to wake up early and we can stay and have more time to also make sure students are able to get to school on time.

     There are multiple reasons people say this is the wrong idea stating would you have to push the end of school out more. Yes you would but only by an hour, maybe because we would make school start that late just push it out an hour.

    Now what about extracurricular activities or jobs? How will kids do these activities? For sports you could have a practice before school or after school cause in my experience practice has started 30 minutes to an hour after school anyway so you could easily push that back.

     Now for a teen job there are many options such as the weekends or the time after school cause according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics only 22.5 percent of high school students are actually employed and if you play sports you are most likely not to be employed.

     So when you pay attention to the real statistics you are usually doing school and a sport or school and a job so you could easily balance your schedule. This could also help kids finish their homework to have extra time in the morning just in case they fall asleep doing their homework.

    The last thing is about getting rides to school. If you think about it, more kids can take the bus and we can make sure the buses come out later so it is easier to ride the bus and we can make sure the bus is free for all students so they have the chance to get to school.