OPINION
Indiana Defrate
Crimson Chronicle Reporter
Due to the minimal sleep that many students have a chance to get, school should be an hour shorter, starting an hour later. If school were to start at 9:30 a.m. instead of 8:30 a.m., there would be a spike in attendance rates and in grades. Although that one hour does not seem like much, it may have a big impact.
Currently, we are in school for seven hours (8:30 a.m.. – 3:33 p.m..) All schools must have at least 180 school days to meet the California Education Code’s standards (charter schools only need 175.) To meet this 180-day requirement and the daily minutes requirement in California, we need only around six hours in a day, and in LAUSD, each class must be at least 72 minutes. Our class periods in Hollywood Highschool are 88 minutes each. With four 72 minute classes, and the addition of lunch nutrition and breakfast, the total time comes out to 5.73 hours required per day. If you rounded that up to account for passing periods, it would come out to a more reasonable six-hour school day, starting at 9:30 a.m., and ending at the current 3:33 p.m.
The reason this starting time is so important is due to people’s circadian rhythm. A circadian rhythm, or circadian cycle, is the body’s 24 hour internal clock, which dictates when it needs to sleep and when it needs to be awake. In teenagers, this rhythm is shifted back three hours. This means that teenagers need to sleep later and wake up later than their adult counterparts. For the majority of people in our age range, melatonin production peaks at around 7 a.m., while for adults, it peaks at around 4 a.m.. Meaning, for a teenager to wake up at 6 or 7 a.m., would be equivalent to an adult being forced to wake up at 3 or 4 a.m., according to the article “The Impact of School Start Times on Adolescent Health and Academic
Performance,” on the website SchoolStartTimes.
With the small amount of sleep that many teens receive, the one extra hour would go a long way in improving their mental health, attendance, and grades. And with the availability of Metro Tap Cards, lack of transportation without the aid of a guardian is not an excuse to keep the school hours this early.