School starting times have been controversial for a very long time, and many people believe they need to change.

While each state is in charge of the educational decisions in their own state, the starting times for all of them seem far too early. 

In every state, school starts in the seven or eight a.m. hour. You can find a full list here.

In our state, the current official start time is 7:30 a.m., and most kids arrive at the school between 7:15 and 7:25. This seems early enough for most students, disregarding the time it also takes for them to get ready for school.

In the state of Pennsylvania, students must attend school for 180 days; to note, high school students must have 990 hours of instructional time according to the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

Starting school so early is problematic, because it limits teenager’s amount of sleep. 

Consider that many students have after school activities, like sports or a job. So, by the time school is over, and they’ve participated in these after school responsibilities, it doesn’t leave much time for the homework that needs completed or the chores at home. As a result, students stay up late and don’t get a healthy amount of sleep. 

The CDC states that “children aged 6–12 years should regularly sleep 9–12 hours per 24 hours, and teenagers aged 13–18 years should sleep 8–10 hours per 24 hours.”

With the current start time at 7:20,  it can make it very challenging to get enough sleep for the school day, and can lead to health issues.

Junior football player Logan Schepers said he “feels the start time is way too early. It makes it hard to finish all my schoolwork, work a job, and play a sport while still having enough sleep for school.”

There are several different ways to resolve this issue. One solution could be to make the start time  later, whilst adding that lost time onto the end of the day to not lessen much of the school day.

For example, we start school at 8:30 a.m. and our days end at 3:10 p.m. This isn’t a huge change, as in previous years students attended school until 2:36 p.m.

This would help with the amount of sleep students get, while also not making the school day feel much different than before.

Another resolution could be to change the school schedule along with daylight times–making use of longer sunlight for longer school days.

This would feature a much more thought out schedule that would have the departure and start times to fluctuate in order for after school activities to still be played at the same intensity. 

For example, in the months of September, October, March, April, and May could begin at 9 a.m. and dismiss at 3:40. Because there is daylight well into the evening, students could stay at school and practice later. 

While the months of November, December, January, and February could feature the one hour later schedule discussed above.

There are drawbacks to these solutions, as it will be difficult to adjust and have everything go smoothly with such a different schedule, but the school navigated the time changes this year with little difficulty.

Parents’ schedules may also be affected, as they would have to change ways for their children to get to and from school. 

After school activities will also be hard to control, being that other school districts are running on different schedules, and pairing games could become problematic.

With all of these consequences, school starting times still have enough positive reasons to construct a new schedule to run on with minor changes to sports.