The CDC recommends that 6-12 year olds should be getting 9-12 hours per 24 hours and 13-18 year olds should be getting 8-10 hours per 24 hours. High school students today are working way too hard with school, work, and after school sports or clubs there is so much being piled up on teenagers' shoulders. Don't forget that they are going through puberty too and that's a lot on their bodies. Everyone needs sleep. It's an important daily thing you need and if you don't get it you won't be able to provide your best work. If school were to start later, even just by an hour this could improve students' work effort and how well they do this might even give them more motivation to do work. 

High School is from 7:30 am to 2:00 pm, Elementary is from 9:00 am to 3:30 pm. That's 6 hours and 30 minutes Monday-Friday. The majority of teenagers have to wake up at least an hour or more before school starts to get ready and get themself to school.  So if school is starting at 7:30 that's cutting into the importance of sleep that's needed. If Highschoolers need about 8-10 hours of sleep they would need to go to sleep around 10. It would only leave 8 hours of sleep if they go to sleep at that time but most teens are working and won't get home till 10 . Better Health Channel says that “Regularly not getting enough sleep leads to chronic sleep deprivation. This can have dramatic effects on a teenager’s life, impacting their mental well-being, and increasing their risk of depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem. It can also affect academic performance at school.”  If we were to push school back an hour or 2 that would push the sleep time up to 9-10 hours of sleep and then teenagers would be getting the sleep they need.

Students' academic rates would go up, there would be better attendance and more teenagers would be graduating, Jonna Fong-Isariyawonges From Mahoning Matters says “One study looked at school start times, graduation rates and attendance rates for 30,000 students in 29 high schools across seven states. It found a significant improvement in attendance rates, from 90% to 93%, and graduation rates, from 80% to 90%, four years after delaying school start times to 8:30.” If you ask the majority of the chronically absent people why they are, it's most likely because they are too tired to wake up that early and get to school so if we push the time back even just an hour there will be more people less tired when coming to school and more people will want to come to school and have the motivation to do work. 

We need to talk to the school districts and get the words out there to make it known about the concerns we have about adolescents' sleep and also bring it to their attention that it can improve attendance, better graduation rates, and will make students more attentive in class. We need to let teens sleep in on weekends, try to encourage their teens to go to sleep early so they can get enough sleep, and try to keep the same daily schedule.