I think an important part of the conversation is that most teens have a different circadian rhythm.
Ideally, the schools start late enough that teens can go to bed at midnight or 1 AM and still have enough time to get the sleep they need. Instead of school ending at 2 or 3 o’clock in the US, why not end at 5pm and make the start time later?
Aren’t school times early because jobs start early and parents want their kids in childcare at that time? If the parents didn’t want it this way, I don’t think the schools would do it.
This seems to be talking about high school though. I don’t know that childcare issues apply at that point.
Here in texassss, first class time would be irrelevant as anything related to sports or music is gonna start at six in the morning and it isn’t considered a class.
If a 12th grader rides the bus, and so does his neighbor in 1st grade, they get on the same bus.
So schools start and end at the same time. That’s not even addressing how many families “the big ones watching the little one” where a young child’s after school childcare is their older siblings.
Having them on different schedules would cause a lot of issues.
Here in texassss, first class time would be irrelevant as anything related to sports or music is gonna start at six in the morning and it isn’t considered a class.
I mean, if I was in Texas I’d rather have practice at 6am than 4pm… I grew up way further north and during the summer I was in the fields on a farm at like 5am and happy about it, because it meant we were done when it reached peak heat instead of spending it working.
Heat stroke is a real thing and 4pm is the hottest part of the day.
But early morning practice would wake the kids up and mitigate the effects of early classes. Moving traditionally after school programs to the morning is part of the solution.
Heck, we have summer vacations because school kids used to be needed on the farm and then because it was too expensive to air condition the schools.
In a “scientific” world, we’d reevaluate education and make changes all the time, but people are tied to their traditions and don’t want to think that the older folks had an inferior education.
It’s still very expensive to cool down schools in the summer. A lot of schools don’t even have air conditioning, and they don’t have the budget to pay teachers for two more months, much less install AC everywhere.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ll happily pay my school taxes to get a better educational system, but not everyone sees it that way. You’d need to raise taxes, and people are selfish.
We had a debate in our district about start times, and there were a myriad of factors.
Working parents was one factor. Most people need to get their kids on the bus or dropped off before work.
Bussing was another hurdle. The High School busses needed to be done in time to do the Middle School and Elementary School runs, which means most of the drivers were running three to five routes every morning. It’s true, your teen might not need supervision in the morning, but your second grader shouldn’t be home alone waiting for the bus.
The factor I didn’t anticipate was after school activities. If your kid plays outdoor sports, you need classes to be over early enough to have enough daylight left for practices. One of the suggestions that was discussed was having the elementary schools start before the high school, but that did not leave enough time after school. Even the indoor activities would go too long into the evening for the kids to get their homework done.
There are a lot more factors, but those were the ones that surprised me.
Not enough time for homework seems like kids doing these activities already don’t have enough time for everything and are sacrificing their sleep in order to get it all done. Feels like you can pick 2 between sleep, school work, and activities, and currently the latter two are winning.
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