You are familiar with the fruitless class. Not that class where you already know the content, or the class that you curse under your breath, no. I’m talking about the first period class.

With the likeness of an animated corpse, you stumble through the doorway to your classroom, wishing, silently, that the previous night’s homework had been less time-consuming. You shuffle to your designated seat, still under the stupor of sleep. The next 90 minutes are going to consist of little else than finding your waking self. Sure, you’ll take the notes, but will you manage to learn anything? Not a chance.

Sleep isn’t viewed as simply a luxury. A decades-old battle over when high schools should start continues, with one side citing the health problems caused by sleep deprivation, and the other arguing that the logistics of starting later are just too troublesome.

“[…] research shows that getting enough sleep is a biological necessity, as important to good health as eating well or exercising,” said the National Sleep Foundation in a statement on their website. “[Teens] need on average 9 1/4 hours of sleep per night for optimal performance, health and brain development.”

As an official teenager, I seldom get the recommended amount of sleep. This exposes me to a whole slew of potential health complications. There are the obvious ones like inattentiveness and a weaker immune system, and there are the ones less so, including depression, stunted growth, and altered brain chemistry. Many advocates of later start times recommend 8:30, no earlier.

Starting later sounds like an elegant solution, but those in opposition see it as a logistical nightmare. School boards would need to completely rework their bus schedules. High schools currently start the earliest, then middle schools, and lastly, the elementary schools. School buses follow this linear pickup route. If high schools suddenly began to start at the elementary school time, it would spell a need for more vehicles and people to drive them.

Additionally, some fear that a later start time would inhibit high schoolers’ participation in after school activities.
The risks of sleep deprivation, especially for developing people, warrants an investment by school boards across the nation. After school activities that are pushed back 45 minutes aren’t going to become impossible to schedule. A generation of depressed, inattentive people is not one I wish to take part in.