Starting School Later
... the morning to get ready for school (Dabney). Many people argue that there are children that do go to sleep at reasonable hours at night, but I have found research that shows that adolescents experience a biological shift in their sleep cycle as they enter puberty. This shift makes it so even if teens do go to bed at 9:30 at night, they generally don't fall asleep until after 11 p.m. (Delisio). In 1997, Minneapolis schools moved start times from 7:15 a.m. to 8:40 p.m. and closing times from 1:45 p.m. to 3:20 p.m. (Dabney). Though starting later in the morning did not affect the time that children went to bed at night, it did move attendance rates up by seven percentage points. Virginia has also decided to start school later in the day. "For kids who really need sleep to function, it is worth doing," said Judy Farmer, a board member for the Minneapolis School District. "It helps them and doesn't hurt the other kids" (qtd Dabney). Sleep expert, Patti Teel (Grady), says a lack of sleep means short-term memory. Students have a harder time remembering from day to day what they just learned. "If the brain can't rest long enough and deeply enough to move information from temporary to long-term memory, the information is lost" (Grady). So, just how much sleep do we actually need? Students up to grade 5, who average 9 ½ hours of sleep a night, are recommended to get between 10 and 11 hours. High school students should have at least nine hours of sleep to avoid lack of attention, irritability, anxiety, and decreased creativity (Delisio). Not only are some school board members agreeing that this would help children in school, but also the students themselves believe later starting times would help improve their schoolwork. "I doze off sometimes. Not really," said Clarence Jones, a senior at Westville High School. "But you can't pay attention because you are worried about falling asleep. When you are tired, it's hard to do school work" (Dabney). There is an alternative school called Pacers Academy that opened three years ago. They start school at 10 a.m. and end at 5 p.m. "It allows them to go to bed later and get the eight to ten hours of sleep they need," said Silverman. "Lots of our kids come here after ten hours' sleep. We don't have a first-period snooze hour. They come here ready to learn" (Dabney). Ending school at 5 p.m. might not be such a bad idea. A study conducted by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research sampled 1,500 children nationwide. They found tha...