<p>There seems like there would be a lot more benefits to starting later. </p>
<p>[Making</a> teens start school in the morning is ‘cruel’, brain doctor claims | Mail Online](<a href=“Making teens start school in the morning is 'cruel', brain doctor claims | Daily Mail Online”>Making teens start school in the morning is 'cruel', brain doctor claims | Daily Mail Online)</p>
<p>I agree. Our sons leave for school at 6:30 each morning. Teens don’t function optimally that early! I think even an hour would make a big difference.</p>
<p>There are. However- after school activities would end much later instead of the 5 pm I remember for son. We always had a late supper after H usually was done with work so son being home later would not have hurt.</p>
<p>There are also benefits to year round schooling with the vacations distributed differently. They tried to do this for younger kids in our district once upon a time to better utilize school buildings but couldn’t get it going.</p>
<p>I suspect the old farm lifestyle will never go away despite many kids not being needed on the farm like a century ago.</p>
<p>Short answer- tradition.</p>
<p>I’m wondering if schools have considered this but are concerned that parents would be leaving for work before kids leave for school and there would be issues with that?</p>
<p>sowest…do your kids have a Zero Period? or do you live far from the school? Zero periods are usually optional.</p>
<p>Where I live, kids leave for school (by bus or car) between 7am and 7:30. that seems to mesh well with parents leaving for work.</p>
<p>benefits to year round schooling</p>
<p>When I lived in Calif, the local publics had year-round schooling and dropped it for a few reasons:</p>
<p>1) the A/C costs were horrendous.</p>
<p>2) daycare for those breaks were a pain for many working parents. the school year began in 3rd week of July, then after 10/11 weeks, the kids were off for 3 weeks (fall), then 10/11 weeks of school, then off for 3 weeks at christmas, then 10/11 weeks of school, then off 3 weeks for spring break, then 10/11 weeks of school, then off 5 weeks for summer (beginning mid June)</p>
<p>3) once you finally got your kids back into the routine of “school night bedtime” then school would end for 3 weeks.</p>
<p>4) summers were too short to fit in swimming lessons, using family pools, and often conflicted with family celebrations (reunions, weddings, vacations, etc).</p>
<p>5) With daytime savings in the summer, it was often “just sundown” when it was time to start getting kids to bed. Very frustrating.</p>
<p>Summers were 5 weeks…from mid June to mid July. Students would miss class because families were going to family reunions or weddings in late July or early Aug when the rest of the country was still off school.</p>
<p>Some kids in the country need to be at the bus stop nearly an hour before school starts. It was a 3 minute drive for H on his way to work- son pushed limits as the Orchestra teacher was lenient about students still getting ready after the bell. Kid could have walked the mile up and down hills if his dad was already at work.</p>
<p>Because the teachers have a life</p>
<p>The first classes at our local high schools start at 7:10. No zero period. This means buses are picking up kids between 6:20 and 6:45 so they get to school by 7. This also means lunch is at 11 and school ends before 2:30. It’s pretty brutal on the students.</p>
<p>It’s also brutal on the teachers and staff Teachers are there BEFORE the students, so it’s not surprising to see them there at 6:30 AND they often stay later than the students, until 4pm or even later. So I’m not sure the adults have much of a life.</p>
<p>I believe, in Virginia the main employers have argued for the earlier school schedule, just as they have successfully argued for starting the school year later, after Labor Day.</p>
<p>Some schools have extremely complex bus scheduling issues. This they have to juggle btn HS, MS and elemetary schools, all using the same fleet.</p>
<p>There’s a busing issue in many communities. In our town, we run three waves of public school buses. Each wave takes a set amount of time – say roughly an hour. (My kids are out, and I forget exactly) Starting at 6:30 for the high school kids, means that the elementary kids are at school by 9:30. On the other end, going home starting at 2:10, means the littlest ones are arriving home well after 4 pm. IIRC, the waves take less time in the afternoon.</p>
<p>Fewer waves means contracting for more buses, but would also mean possible later start times and earlier home arrivals – on average.</p>
<p>Our school corp., k-12, starts at 8:35. They are done at 3:20. This is later than any school I know but seems to work ok. There is no before or after school care here. The schools that start early get out early ~2ish. I’d rather they have the sleep time than unsupervised afternoons free. Ours usually got out of practices 5:30-6.</p>
<p>The more metro school districts in our state are jumping on the year round calendar. I can’t stand it and am glad mine will be out before someone gets the bright idea here. It’s usually a new superintendent that gets the ball rolling on those things. </p>
<p>I don’t think year-round will fly here due to the amount of kids in 4H. I think scheduling babysitting would be a nightmare and it doesn’t leave enough summer to do much of anything. Starting school in July is absurd. I’d much rather keep our summer than have extra weeks in Oct., Dec., and March–all of which are cold and wet in my state.</p>
<p>^ Yes, that’s the situation in our large urban/suburban school system. Buses must be shared. All high schools in our district start at 7:15. Some middle schools don’t start until 9:15. They don’t get out until after 4:00. I see the middle schoolers in our neighborhood walking home from the bus stop at close to 5:00 some days.</p>
<p>We have several local counties that have made the swap with hs’s starting later and elementary schools earlier. Our kids start early with busses picking kids up right after 6. Many teachers are only available before school if they participate in professional development, teach at the college to supplement income, or have young kids. There is no after school commitment, simply additional hours and they pick. My son shows up at 6:15am to see them, leaving home at 5:45, getting up at 5:10. He has after school activities that run until 7-10pm 2-3 nights/week, and works PT. Homework is a bear. Frankly, he’s looking forward to college next year when the work is harder, more independent, but there’s more unscheduled time to get it done, and 8am is considered an ungodly hour. The schools that have made the switch have meetings for ECs before school hours when there’s no bus which can exclude some kids and they’re getting up early again. Everything just shifts. I don’t know how much it’s helps kids who are busy, involved, seeing their teachers consistently.</p>
<p>Read this thread <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/861998-high-school-start-times-too-early-any-changes.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/861998-high-school-start-times-too-early-any-changes.html</a></p>
<p>My middle school started really late because they reused the buses throughout the county, so all the schools started at different times. It was like 10:20 if I remember correctly, and ended at 4:55 I think. I think my high school started at 7:40 and ended at 3:30. </p>
<p>These are generally around business hours, I don’t think either was unreasonable. Sure, maybe people don’t want to go to school so early, same as workers don’t want to go to work so early but they still do it.</p>
<p>Additionally, I think there’s some rule that they can’t stay past 6pm or something? It’s like a crime prevention thing? I’m not very sure what it is or even if that was actually a law rather than a school policy or anything like that though. </p>
<p>Additionally, in high school most students have a job after school, so they have to get out earlier to get to work. This isn’t really an issue in Middle or Elementary school.</p>
<p>The main reason in the Northeast is that outdoor sports need light to play and when it gets dark and cold at 4:30, starting later doesn’t make much sense.</p>
<p>Why the school schedule has to revolve around sports is another question entirely.</p>
<p>My high school had a 7:12 to 2:10 schedule when I attended. It was really, really brutal. When I was a teenager I could go to bed whenever I wanted and I would not fall asleep until 1am no matter what, and I had to be up at 5 to get ready for the bus to come. I was constantly tired. And I couldn’t eat until I had woken up more, I remember for a time classes were a tiny bit later and the buses came a tiny bit earlier so I had a few minutes when I got to school to buy breakfast in the cafeteria, but they shifted the hours and then there wasn’t time anymore. So I didn’t eat until lunch, which was okay but A lunch was really early and made for a long afternoon. If you got B lunch it was better, but you might have been starving by then if you skipped breakfast.</p>
<p>I’ve always heard it was necessary so the buses could go pick the middle school kids up, and so that we would be home before our younger siblings so that they wouldn’t get back to an empty house. I survived it, I was young and could live on a lot less sleep then, but I think I would have performed better with more sleep. Now I couldn’t do that, I need my 8 or 9 hours or I can’t get through the day. I’m not looking forward to having to get my own children up for those early buses!</p>
<p>In our area, it’s the Great God Bus Schedule. They want to use 17 school busses to move 20,000 kids in the state’s largest school district. One of the high schools in our area takes up at 7 a.m which means some kids are on the bus at 6 and they start going to lunch at 10:30.</p>
<p>My kids, in high school, do start at 9:15. The middle school starts at 7:45, the elementary schools at 8:30, but the high school runs 9:15 to 3:45. Sports and other after school activities run until 6. We moved to this district and it was a change from our 8:00 start, but we got used to it. Mine still go to bed around 10, but it is 11 or 12, they are still getting plenty of sleep.</p>
<p>Probably the most difficult part is that if my daughter has to leave for a sports activity, she misses the last period every time (usually last two) and that’s hard because she has her harder classes in the afternoon. What’s nice is that you can have a dentist appt in the morning and still make it to school on time.</p>
<p>And yes, I’m gone long before my kids are out of bed. The school is 4 miles away, so if they miss the bus (they don’t take the bus - the horrors of being seen on the big yellow bus) or all their rides, they must walk or ride a bike to school. In 2 years I haven’t had a problem.</p>
<p>Sports and buses, enough said.</p>
<p>Because the teachers have a life</p>
<p>oh please…that isn’t an excuse.</p>
<p>Other full time employees are at their jobs til 5-6pm or later. If school started at 9am, then it would end at 3pm or 4pm…how does that prevent teachers from “having a life”? What about the rest of the world?? lol</p>
<p>That said, later start times just seem to have their own problems.</p>