School for most states starts pretty earlier in the morning, causing kids to have less focus because they are still very tired. The school days starting so early, it makes students go to bed a lot earlier than what they should be. Most high school students have jobs and have to balance work and homework after school. Some students don’t get off work until late at night causing them to stay up late just to finish up the large load of homework that may include: history, math, science, and even English. I believe that if the school days got pushed back by at least an hour or an hour and a half, students would possibly come to school a little more alert and awake. Most schools start at 8 a.m. which causes students feeling tired and moody all day long where they are forced to learn and focus on stuff they’d rather not focus on. Teens are required to get 7-9 hours of sleep each night but most kids only get about 6-7 hours because of how early school starts and how late they get home at night. Students not only have work and homework to do but they also have extracurricular activities for sports or band/choir that cause them to get home quite late.

School is important because it helps us achieve what we want to do in our near futures. I agree that students need to attend school but that school needs to start a little bit later just so more students pay attention and actually understand what is going on. They can’t achieve their full potential because they are sleep deprived and more focused on when they get to go home and sleep. Though many kids don’t like the aspect of school in general, there is a big majority of students who want to continue their education even after they graduate but they require to know the lessons and teachings of high school before entering the real world. Most parents didn’t get the education they required and so they expect you to get the best. You need sleep, a good mentality along with a passion for learning. I feel that with school starting so early in the morning, a lot of us have lost the passion to learn and that we pay more attention to our lack of sleep issue. The more sleep the better but without the education needed for our futures, we might as well live in a box under a bridge. Life without education is a very tough road and if school times were pushed off till later, a lot of people would be able to achieve their goals.

In New Hope, Pennsylvania, a teacher named Rick Tony pushed the school board into considering moving the start time of 8:00 a.m. to the start time half an hour to 8:30 a.m. four days a week. On Wednesday, their first bell doesn’t ring until 9 a.m. Now that they have the policy of later school days he reports that students are less stressed and way more productive than before. He had parents report to him saying they were happy and glad to have the later day policy. If all schools had this policy the test ratings would be a lot higher. I think that the school boards of all the schools that start early in the morning should take a page out of Rick Tony’s playbook and improve their schools. Our school board really needs to revaluate our school times and see if there is any room to push our school days back so that the students are able to focus and be more productive.