School start times has been a hot topic at WA for a very long time, and the possibility of them changing is seeming more and more likely as the concept gets tossed around with a surprising amount of support. According to senior Madeleine Poirier, in a poll done by the student advisory committee, it was found that a vast majority of students at WA are pushing for a change to the start times. However, the waves of impact that a change like this would have, impacting students, parents, and teachers, would devastate the extracurricular scene and further complicate the schedules of all parties involved.
In a competitive school district like WA, many students struggle to balance their extracurriculars and their academics; a reality that proves difficult as many sports don’t end until very late in the evening. A later end time would be especially difficult for people that participate in these sports, where losing a half hour in the afternoon due to school start times would either mean a half hour less of practice or a later end time. This is especially impactful for those who participate in both a school extracurricular and an outside of school commitment such as a club sport. Afternoon schedules would become even more crammed and commuting from one place to another could become very complicated, especially in households with multiple children that rely on their parents for transportation.
Sleep is another major concern when considering this issue. According to Stanford Medicine, up to 70% of teens are not getting the recommended eight to ten hours of sleep every night, but the solution to this is not to push school start times later. In many cases, if school start times were pushed later, it would act as an excuse for students to stay up later, resulting in no more sleep than the original schedule would’ve allowed.
That said, there is evidence to support that teens who go to sleep later and wake up later have an improved quality of sleep. Melatonin levels, which improve sleep, in teens do not start to rise until around 10:30-11:00 p.m. This means that a student using the minimal amount of sleep, eight hours, still more than 70% of all teens, who goes to bed at 10:30 p.m, would wake up at 6:30 a.m, which is realistic for WA’s current schedule where school starts at 7:30 a.m.
“[The Student Advisory Committee] put out a student survey, and it had about 430 responses and a majority of people were for the school start times change and the biggest reason was for more sleep. But how accurate is that really? Is that teenagers giving thought to a form, or is that teenagers just answering it?” Poirier said. “I don’t think [a need for more sleep] is a strong argument, because I don’t think teenagers are reliable enough to go to sleep at the same time.”
Thus, if the change to school start times was instituted, it would make it easier for students who go to bed around the start of the teenage body’s melatonin release to get above the recommended amount of sleep. However, it would not help the students who are already staying up later than they should. There is no question that there are an abundance of teens who stay up too late to realistically achieve a healthy amount of sleep, and a lot of teens will go to sleep as late as they can, meaning there would be no change in the quality or quantity of the sleep that they get. There is no point in trying to help a demographic of people who don’t want to be helped.
A few methods including maintaining a sleep schedule over the weekend, not sleeping in, and taking routine naps, can be beneficial to help teens get the correct amount of sleep possible given the current school parameters. In order for these conditions to improve, school start times do not need to change, students habits do.
Another factor to take into consideration is the possible development of seasonal affective disorder (SAD) which is caused by less exposure to daylight and is more common around winter time when the days are shorter. With later school start times, clubs and extracurriculars would be pushed later into the day, making it hard for students who partake in activities to get any amount of time in the sun at all, increasing the risk of this disorder. SAD comes with a variety of symptoms including social withdrawal, low energy, weight gain, and eventually suicidal thoughts. Interestingly, these symptoms are very similar to the effects of low quality sleep.
According to history teacher Michael Martell, SAD could be more of a concern in the upcoming years at WA especially as Massachusetts returns to standard time in the winter after experiencing daylight savings in the summer. This further limits the ability of students to make it outside with more daylight hours left.
Getting outside is really beneficial, but also very difficult to manage, especially during school when everyone is inside longer and they have commitments in the afternoon. A lot of school sports and activities don’t end until very late in the night and at that point, the sun has already set. This is the case for a lot of students at WA who, especially as the days get shorter, may not have spent any time outdoors in the sun by the time they are done with their activities.
For students, the argument for or against the change to school start times comes down to mainly two topics: sleep and health, and extracurriculars. Due to the effects of SAD and the current parameters of the school schedule already allowing for healthy amounts of sleep, the change in start times would create no overall improvements to students’ health. The effects that the start time change would have on out of school clubs and sports as well as outside of school extracurriculars, however, is potentially devastating.
