Students can Hit the Snooze: California Dreamin’
PHOTO BY: Katie Fleming, Starting next fall, school will start at 8:45.
June 2, 2022
As the year progresses, waking up for school in the morning becomes harder and harder. Students and staff get more work and aren’t as motivated to get ready in the morning, so everyone, especially myself, wish they could get an extra hour of sleep. Well, Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill No. 328 that states that beginning in the 2022-2023 school year, all high schools in California will not be permitted to start before 8:30 a.m.!
I think this decision will be an amazing and beneficial change to our schedules. I believe many students and even staff need more sleep each night than what they usually get. Alejandro Vega, Principal of Millikan High School even states his opinion on this.
“I understand the intent in starting later. The main benefit, I hope, will come of it is that students will get more rest,” says Vega.
I found some research behind this and the Sleep Foundation states that teenagers need at least 8–10 hours of sleep each night. However, studies have demonstrated that most American adolescents are not getting enough sleep when they have to balance homework and extracurriculars. Nearly 70% of high schoolers do not get enough sleep on school nights.
Millikan starting at 8:45 a.m. rather than 7:50 a.m. will give everyone an extra hour and fifteen minutes or so of more sleep per night or more time to do what they need to in the morning without sacrificing more sleep time.
Another expectation of starting school later is that, “there will be less tardies, especially for first and second period. Tardy slips are not given if students are less than 20 minutes late to the first period of the day. But with this change, we hope the tardies will go down,” says Vega.
Being tardy has been an ongoing problem amongst students at Millikan. This is unfortunate since the first few minutes of the period are often the most important and students are taking advantage of the fact that being up to 20 minutes late will not earn them a detention. Starting this Fall, everyone has even more time to get to school on time to prevent this from occurring.
Quote by Isabel Cholbi from The Daily Californian about the importance of sleep.
One of the only things discouraging school starting later next year will be the amount of daylight left in the day especially when students have sports or other activities after school. Vega says, “About 70% of our students don’t live in the Millikan area, so some people take buses home or walk. When the time change occurs, it’s just going to get darker sooner so they might not be able to participate in after school activities.” Although this may be an issue, students will not be alone in this and schools will find convenient ways around this and to ensure students get home safely and on time.
Starting school at 8:45 a.m. should be a positively beneficial change to our schedules. I love the idea of more sleep, more time getting ready, and not being tardy. Hopefully most staff and students do too.
Kassidy Echnoz • Jun 14, 2022 at 11:02 am
In Issue 4/2022 (published June 2, 2022) Katherine Flemming wrote an article titled “Students can Hit the Snooze: California Dreamin'”. In this article Katherine talks about the new law that our governor passed which will allow students to start school no earlier than 8:30 come the fall. Katherine talks about how this will benefit students allow them to get more sleep or have time for other activities. She interviewed Mr. Vega and he talked about some concerns, like getting out of sports when it’s dark, and how he would work to solve them. I myself am an early riser so I am excited for the fall because I will get to enjoy my mornings. I am however not excited to end school later. This all just makes me think about kids who are in sports after school as well as students who have jobs after school. If anything I feel that most kids will end up getting less sleep because they will have to work later. Thank you for writing this article Katie!!
Zoe-Jane Cardwell • Jun 8, 2022 at 10:04 am
In Issue 4/2022 (published Jun 2, 2022) Katherine Fleming wrote an article titled “Students can Hit the Snooze: California Dreamin’.” This article talks about how our governor passed the law of pushing our school hours back one more hour. The author goes on to say it will be a good thing, I have a different opinion. PUshing back students an hour isn’t giving them more time to do anything, including sleep. Starting later means getting out later. What does that solve? It doesn’t solve anything. For the matter of wanting kids to get more sleep the solution isn’t pushing us back an hour. What about the kids who have jobs or do sports outside of school? THey will be forced to work later or even practice later than they normally would. For me I normally work from 3-8:30 with the new start and end time. I won’t be able to work then. I will have to work from 4-10:30, which is closing hours. This makes me have to go to bed way later than I normally would. School officials will say it’ll help, but in reality it’s making matters worse. Thank you for writing about this issue.