<p>We had some high schools in our area that wanted to try to switch the early start with the little kids (who are up at the crack of dawn). Guess what? They could not come to a consensus with ALL of the school districts in the area…and the after school sports schedule was the thing that would have suffered. Some after school sports that happen outdoors already barely get done by dark…having school end later for the high school students would have pushed the start time to later also. In addition, there were students who did after school EC types of activities outside of school and these start times would have needed to change too (e.g. private music lessons, tennis lessons, etc).</p>
<p>In addition, some families relied on their older students to be home when the YOUNGER ones got off of the bus. Swapping the start times would have made the younger kids arrive home first, thus forcing some families to pay for day care costs after school when they didn’t need to do so previously.</p>
<p>My kids didn’t love getting up in the morning for high school…but you know…the DID love being done in the afternoon (they didn’t play sports all three seasons). It was a tradeoff.</p>
<p>Also, our high school rotated the periods so that the same class was NOT the first one in the morning every day.</p>
<p>Eastcoascrazy–Impossible to answer specifically how any given school district can make later start times work without knowing the intricate details of the budget, community demographics, road system, etc. (can’t even do this where I live because these are not all details to which the public is privy). But 1) it’s interesting that no one ever asks these questions when school systems suddenly decide to change school hours at will, as they have other places I’ve lived, or as so many did 30 years ago when they set the hours back to 7 a.m.; 2) you might be surprised how many solutions can be found when there’s a will to do something and when people let go of certain assumptions about the way things have to be. I know that sounds like pie-in-the-sky drivel to you. More substantial thought is in this Brookings report, which suggests that even in systems where starting later costs real money, the investment may well be worthwhile in terms of student achievement: <a href=“http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/papers/2011/09_organize_jacob_rockoff/092011_organize_jacob_rockoff_paper.pdf[/url]”>http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/papers/2011/09_organize_jacob_rockoff/092011_organize_jacob_rockoff_paper.pdf</a></p>
<p>to parent56, my classes started at 8:15 and I lived in a farming community. We didn’t get out of school until 3:35. Sports happened after school and theater started at 6:00. I see the benefits, but it needs to be a local district decision. some districts would be able to, but it shouldn’t happen without parental input, teachers input and district budget analysis.</p>
<p>So if it can’t be done without that information, then why exactly should the federal government be involved again? Let the school boards do their jobs.</p>
<p>Earth mother, I laid out a rather detailed scenario for you in the posts I cited. We have over 70 schools in our near the beltway county wide district. Many double income families who commute. Three start times now. High school starts at 7:25, middle schools start at 8:25, elementary schools start at 9:20 (those are approximate, with a few minutes variance between some schools.) The buses are full at each time, so condensing times would not work without a considerable increase in transportation costs, or reducing bus services. The district already has no bus service for kids living within half a mile, who have safe sidewalks and no major highways to cross. </p>
<p>That leaves us with flipping times, or changing the three start times so that the earliest kids would start at 8 and the latest starting at 9:50, just in time for the 10 AM federally mandated lunch time . Which also means that everyone comes home later. Flipping times means that either the elementary or middle school kids would be standing at the bus stop at 6:45 in the winter. </p>
<p>High schools starting late do have to contend with how that impacts sports teams who have to be able to finish games before dark in spring and fall. Since they have to coordinate game times with schools that are outside the district as well, spring and fall athletes would have to miss the last hour or more of school on game days. The county park and rec programs run in the afternoons after school, and, again, many of these also need to be conducted prior to sunset.</p>
<p>You need to have a logical, workable plan for everyone if you are advocating for a federal mandate, which we all know will not include funding.</p>
<p>well, some may post the research…but all I know is that both my teenagers are asleep within 15 minutes of hitting the pillow at 10:00 or before. Are they the exceptions…or have their bodies just become accustomed to NOT going to bed late? I would venture to guess that too many teens are too “wired” before bed.</p>
<p>I would LOVE it if the hs started later! I believe it is in the best interest of the kids…While I don’t think more government involvement is a good thing…I would like the districts to do this on their own after looking at all of the research available.
Just from my own observation (and a child who has always needed a great deal of sleep) it isn’t just the amount of sleep (say 8 hours) but the timing of those 8 hours…she simply struggles to get up early …( I had to request only afternoon pre-school and kindergarten!..1st grade and full day school was the start of problems that only increased as the start times got earlier with each school) My daughter has admitted that she falls asleep in class almost daily! I was horrified to learn this…she is in very demanding classes and yet she is so tired she falls asleep…she tries to get to sleep earlier but as noted by another poster simply can’t! And even if she does go to sleep earlier she still struggles to get up early! She has even tried taking benadryl to help her fall asleep earlier, but I am opposed to her doing that! Her school schedule should not affect her health in this way! Now we are just waiting for college and she is planning on only scheduling classes after 9am! Hope that will be possible!</p>
<p>2plus2,
Research is usuaslly funded by interested parties. i would not be surprized if research into sleplessness of teenagers (extremely unusual) is funded by pharmacudicals to increase market for sleeping pills. Yes, one’s facts are different from others’, my facts work for me, I will stick to them. I tend to spend my time to control what I can and skip trying to control what I cannot. Sending my kid to bed early was under my control. Making school to start later was not. Everybody else has their own agenda and the way to deal with it. everybody’s life experience is different and we can only act based on what we know. There are too many variables in research that have nothing to do with science. I consider them, others do whatever they deem appropriate.</p>
<p>MiamiDAP, Have you actually taken the time to read any of the research…there is tons of it from all different sources. This isn’t about “making” your kids go to be earlier, my D goes to bed at 9 or 9:30 depending on homework and is still exhausted when she has to get up at 5:30 to catch the bus at 6:25. If she has more work and has to go to bed later she can get as little as 6 1/2 hours of sleep, not enough for a growing teen!</p>
<p>^But, no matter what time school starts or ends, our kids have the same amount of work to do, the same activities, the same sports, the same music lessons. So, if your daughter is exhausted and getting only 6 and a half hours of sleep, it isn’t enough sleep. I don’t see how changing the start time of the school day is going to give her more sleep time. It just shifts the time that she gets started on her homework to a later hour, which means she’ll get to bed that much later, which still only gives her 6 and a half hours of sleep before she has to get up… an hour or so later, but still sleep deprived.</p>
<p>I do not read research. I try drug myself. Some work, others do not. Everybody’s body is different. I found that many pills that work wonderfully for others do not work for me. I also found that some pills depend on brand, as one brand works, and other does not. I always inverstigate myself for drugs and for other decision manking. I do not like to base my decisions on others’ opinions.
But this is not the point of this thread. So, this discussion is irrelevant.</p>
<p>According to the OP, she and others have been working within her own school district (Fairfax, VA) for years to get this passed. According to her links, they have been trying to get the Fairfax school district to mandate an 8AM or later start date since January of 2004.</p>
<p>So apparently, the game plan is: after nearly EIGHT YEARS of unsuccessful work to convince ONE school district to change its policy, the next logical step is to ask for a federal mandate.</p>
<p>We are from Fairfax. I tend to remember the county either sent a survey or asked parent to vote for the change school start time (forget the details). The mojority prefered to keep starting time the same. Starting school later does not give kid more sleep. It just push everything back one hour. It really makes no sense to change.</p>
<p>Without getting into the arguments pro and con, may I suggest that if you’re going to propose such legislation, it should say that school cannot start before 8 a.m. (or whatever time you’ve chosen) and that school buses may not deliver students to school more than 30 minutes before the start of the school day.</p>
<p>If you don’t put in the second part, communities that are constrained by the complexities of their bus schedules will deal with some of the scheduling issues by dropping off high school students a very long time before school starts – which defeats the purpose of starting school later. In fact, in some places, there is already a long gap between the time when buses drop kids off and the time when school starts – leading kids to look for alternate ways to get to school, most of which create major traffic jams and hazards near high schools (my son was able to sleep 45 minutes later in the morning by having a parent drop him at school rather than taking the school bus – but dropping him off was a horror, since so many other people were doing the same thing).</p>
<p>“Without getting into the arguments pro and con, may I suggest that if you’re going to propose such legislation, it should say that school cannot start before 8 a.m. (or whatever time you’ve chosen) and that school buses may not deliver students to school more than 30 minutes before the start of the school day.”</p>
<p>-This is sooo unfair to working couples who try extremely hard to maintain balanced family life and engage kids in after school activiites. These people put their kids’ interest first when looking for jobs with earlier starts. now you are considering to demolish this instead of adjusting your kid’s sleeping paterns. Very unfair!!</p>
<p>I wasn’t arguing for or against the legislation – just saying that if you’re going to have legislation, it should control the bus times as well as school starting times.</p>
<p>Otherwise, communities will schedule the buses to drop students at school a very long time before school starts, which kind of defeats the purpose and creates inequities (students who can get to school in some other way can sleep later than those who have no choice but to take the school bus). </p>
<p>That’s all. I don’t see any unfairness in it.</p>
<p>“Otherwise, communities will schedule the buses to drop students at school a very long time before school starts”
-yes, that would be correct. Then kids will have to go to pre-school care adn parents will pay for it. that would be fair for families because it will give them choices. Totalitarian mandates from Federal government are never fair, they please the most loud ones, leaving everybody else without any choices.</p>
<p>That’s a good point, MiamiDAP, if the schools where kids are dropped off long before school starts are elementary schools.</p>
<p>But in my community, it happens at the high school level. The high schools start first, then the middle schools, then the elementary schools. In order for the buses to finish their high school runs and be able to get to the middle school kids on time, many of them have to drop their high school riders at school long before school starts. </p>
<p>In this type of situation – which may be quite different from what happens in your community – there is no day care problem because high school students don’t need day care. But the kids who have to get up earliest – the high schoolers – have to get up even earlier to catch those extremely early buses, unless they have some other way of getting to school.</p>
. Which also means that everyone comes home later. Flipping times means that either the elementary or middle school kids would be standing at the bus stop at 6:45 in the winter. </p>