Persuasive Essay: Should Schools Have Later Start Times?

855 Words4 Pages

What would you do with two more hours of sleep each night? Many students would say that it would help them complete school work and get enough sleep to not be tired throughout the school day. Students who are not well rested show up to class drowsy and not ready to learn, however students who get decent hours of sleep each night come engaged and ready to learn. Schools in the United States should have later start times because it is important for teenagers to get eight to nine hours of sleep at night and people’s bodies are not built to get few hours of sleep. It is important for teenagers to get eight to nine hours of sleep at night to not only succeed in daily tasks but in school as well. Many high school students are not doing as well …show more content…

Parents and school staff find it hard having sports practices and activities running later into the evening and or to someone to watch their children. Carskadon, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior notes, “Meanwhile, parents are often reluctant to have teens start later, whether because they rely on having older children at home in the afternoons to take care of younger siblings or because they’re concerned that it will interfere with extracurricular opportunities” (Lewis). After school activity times would be affected if schools started later because it would push back the start and finish times of the practices. This would make students stay up even later to complete their homework and other nightly activities. Yet, school administration could find a way to enable the school start time to be later and have time for sports and extracurricular activities. As Carskaddon put it, “Implementing later start times can be feasible without causing major disruptions, as many school districts have demonstrated” (Yeager). Although it would be hard, if all stakeholders committed to a time consuming process of coming to solutions, schools can find ways to have students participate in practice and get their homework done and get to sleep at a decent time. With a solution made by the school's stakeholders there would no longer be problems interfering with after school activity