Ten sounds like a nightmare for working parents. Eight seems like a completely reasonable start time to me, yet this law prevents that. Schools should be able to decide for themselves based off of the parents and what works for those in the district.
While as a parent myself I agree but this is high school. Generally speaking someone who's 13 or older should be able to make their way onto a bus without an adult. When I was that age (granted this was the 90s) I had a key to the house and was trusted to let myself in when I got back.
What's worse is the end of day. My kid is younger and I need to be at the bus stop at 3:50 PM every day to meet her.
I walked by myself a quarter mile to kindergarten. I walked by myself to a bus stop through the rest of my school days until myself & friends started driving. Most of those years I came home to an empty house at the end of the school day.
Not sure why this is a big deal. Kids can manage on their own.
Really late reply but exactly this. I said 13 because this was an article about highschool, which for most people starts at 13.
Though, with that said, I don't know what is the youngest age I could generalize it with. Depends so much on the maturity of the child and also how far where you live is from the bus stop. But I think it is safe to say that age is equal to or less than 13.
I'm a bit older than you, and when I was 10 my parents had no qualms with leaving me home alone (along with my younger sister).
But this was a time when neighbors knew each other well and you could go next door for help if you needed it. (and also if you did something dumb, you could count on your mom finding out from a neighbor)
If they do enough physical and mental labor during the day and turn off their smart phones at night, they’ll have no issue going to sleep early enough.
On the other hand if you do nothing mentally stimulating or physically tiring all day long, then of course you won’t be able to sleep till late.
I'd rather just stick to what studies find as best instead of anecdotes about needing to physically exhaust children to force them into the desired sleep schedule. Also there's research showing humans have varying natural times they ideally sleep at, and they suffer outside those hours.
That's no joke. I did tree removal for a few weeks one Summer while waiting for my Summer camp counselling job to start. I slept a solid 10 hours every night and felt awesome every morning. "Guiltless sleep of the righteous" and all of that. If they could bottle that sleep in a pill without having to drag downed trees all day, it would be crazy addictive.
What is behaviorally/biologically beneficial varies by individual. Societal life should be a factor as that does factor into the holistic well-being of the student. Not just some myopic rule about start times that negatively impacts everything else (after school activities, jobs, parent schedules, etc).
"Schools shouldn't be forcing developing humans into a schedule that impairs their ability to learn and function, no matter what they want to decide"
If you actually believe that, then you have to be against this law. Any schedule will negatively affect someone. A later schedule would have been terrible for me.
> What is behaviorally/biologically beneficial varies by individual.
As someone that has sleep issues that deviate vastly from the norm, I empathize with this point, but it doesn't really mean much when it comes to designing policy, which is supposed to serve its demographic broadly.
> Societal life should be a factor as that does factor into the holistic well-being of the student. Not just some myopic rule about start times that negatively impacts everything else (after school activities, jobs, parent schedules, etc).
The rule being set by the state or by the local school district is hardly of consequence. You're okay with painting broad strokes about parents' lives but then make an argument about individual students.
> If you actually believe that, then you have to be against this law. Any schedule will negatively affect someone. A later schedule would have been terrible for me.
Unless you're suggesting that the start times be adjusted to cater to every single individual's needs, this is just pointing out that the start time the school you attended coincided with what worked for you personally.
According to... what? The whole reason that California passed a law like this and why it's been suggested to push up the start time for high school is largely because the time that many school districts started their high schoolers at was of negative consequence to the children.
> This is totally untrue. At the district level, parents have more say in creating the rules that work for them (their local demographic!).
Are you saying that you'd have no objections if the local school district chose to start high school at a later time? I might agree with you that the state is overstepping its bounds by mandating an earliest start time, but that doesn't seem to be what you're complaining about. It seems more that you disagree that a later start time is beneficial to students (because you personally benefitted from the early start time of your high school) and that it's inconvenient to parents because they have to figure out the logistics of getting their kid to school at a later time.
"the time that many school districts started their high schoolers at was of negative consequence to the children."
That hasn't been proven yet. I guess we'll see with the next year's test scores compared to this year. I don't expect much to change test-wise. I do expect extracurricular partipation will drop.
"Are you saying that you'd have no objections if the local school district chose to start high school at a later time? "
Yes, I would be fine with districts starting later if the district was the one deciding it based on parental representation. At least then we could have a local discussion and do what works best for us.
> Societal life should be a factor as that does factor into the holistic well-being of the student
Not really, tehre seems to be 3 groups of people:
1 - Adults that get some kind of power trip out of tyrany and making kids miserable and justifying it by 'toughening them up'. They deman respect and dicipline while demonstrating total disrespect towards kids and usually have little dicipline themselves. They will have endless stories about how their childhood was tough, and they had to talk to school and home 10 miles, alone, thorugh the snow, and it was uphill both ways
2 - Adults that 'care', by helicoptering over kids and try to shape them into a career they wish they pursued themselves. These guys are hardly better.
3 - Adults that actually respect children as people with independant thoughts and emotional needs
I'm not sure I entirely agree with the second point; Adults need not necessarily be helicopter parents and only push their children towards desirable career fields. They can simply be overbearing while supporting their children in what they want to pursue, though this has its own negative consequences tied to it at as well.
Your list also entirely excludes neglectful parents, whose lack of presence and guidance can be of great detriment to their children's progress in life.
I think that there are a lot of parents who might encompass all sorts of different stereotypes as they try to raise their children the best they can. "Toughening up" children is important. Building up resiliency in a controlled and safe environment is necessary for a person to navigate regular life. Showing compassion and interest in your children is important because it allows them to live their most honest selves. Providing structure for children is important because it helps them succeed in a world that very much relies on various constructs.
I think ultimately, parenthood is hard and finding the right balance of things is hard and unfortunately, you can't just undo the mistakes that can have lifelong impact on your children. I don't think my parents raised me the best they could have, but I don't doubt that they definitely tried.
In what way would it have been awful? Even if you shifted schools several hours ahead of your wake time, it just means that you have more time in the morning and less time in the afternoon, but still well within your normal hours.
I think the goal of these sorts of policies is to increase the breadth of students which can benefit from you know, actually being well rested inside school hours. A person that sleeps later and wakes up later (which studies that justify these sorts of policies indicates teenagers largely are) would benefit from a later start time.
No they won't. They'll still keep their same schedule, and parents will have to figure out how to deal with it. Some don't have family members that can help, and some enterprising daycares will open up early for school kids to deal with them before school.
Of course, the buses won't run that early, so only well-to-do parents will be able to use those daycares in the first place, leaving poor parents even worse off than they were before.
Indeed. Sure some 8 or 9 year olds can get themselves to and from school even without a school bus, but certainly by the time you hit 11 or 12 it's more likely they transport themselves than be chauffeured around
There's a reason that age is called "young adult" . Only helicopter parents can't handle the idea of a 13 year old not being okay on their own for an hour or so after they head out to work. I was riding my bike to school at 9 and I survived, kids haven't changed that much in 15 years. Obviously there are exceptions like for special needs children, but those are pretty rare.
And are fully capable of walking, riding bikes, or waiting for the bus on their own. The permanent infantilization of America is fucking insane and dangerous.
Parents get forced into it due to the laws and societal expectations (juries/civil cases). Guess who can go to jail if their teenage kid doesn't go to school? Fix that law, and then we can start talking about these.
I wouldn't say "nothing to do with parents." But kids in that age range can do quite a few things on their own. I was in college in a different city at 16.
It's not so much them getting to school on their own, yes they can easily do that. It's making sure they are actually awake. When my kids were teens, if someone was not there to make sure they got up, they would sleep until 10 or 11. Alarms, etc. had basically no effect they could sleep through a tornado.
The idea that just because you’re a minor you can’t take a bus, a bus specifically for children, in fact, is ludicrous. Can’t coddle kids forever. Except for special needs people should be able to do basic things by themselves at age 13, earlier in most cases.
If your 14 year old is not capable of sorting themselves out for a couple of hours you've failed as a parent, and your idea that a 17 year old needs a parent to wipe their bottom is hilarious?!
Do you think something magically happens on their 18th birthday?
Don't working parents already have a nightmare with school day ending around 2pm? This would just shift some of that nightmare from afternoon to morning.
They already have daycare picking the kids up. Now they have to drop the kids off, and the kids can't really do anything at daycare because they are quickly getting into the bus to get to school, then when off school there is less time to do anything before their parents pick them up again.
High school has sports and activities though. I know many families that use the sports team as if it were a day care. If they do sports the kids usually get out somewhere between 4:30 and 5:30. Where I live now, a lot of the high schoolers are in school 7:30-5:30. It’s pretty ridiculous, since they also have homework. Many high schools seem to be in the process of transforming themselves into juvenile prisons designed to keep teenagers away from the rest of society.
It’s not an analogy. One of school’s main purposes along with sorting and ranking and reducing their tendency to creativity and independent thought is day care.
not really, it doubles it. Instead of having to arrange for care/transportation/etc once for a few hours in the afternoon, now you have to arrange for it twice for an hour or two in the morning and an hour or two in the afternoon.
I work remotely and start my day at 10am. I've done this for years and the only reason I ever got up early was to drive kids to school. As a working parent starting at 8 was a nightmare for my wife (who works similar hours) and I. We alternated so neither of us would be to sleep deprived as it's really hard to get back to sleep after driving your kids to school.
It's to late to help us.. my youngest just turned 16 and will be able to drive themself to school next year and we'll finally get decent sleep during the school year. But this would be a big boon to lots of people.
Schools ending at 3 pm is also a nightmare for working parents. But most high schoolers can get on the bus themselves. After care, sports exists in many places for those that can’t/whose parents are against it. Now you can just move some of those after school activities before school for kids whose parents won’t let them take the bus themselves.
Plenty of things "should" happen but the systemic problem that if solved would alleviate these issues is to make sure people live near enough to good schools to elide the need for driving children to school in the first place.
As a former child, I truly understand that a lack of sleep is a problem in teens, but I think this solution is probably worse for everybody.
1) The flipside to starting much later is that kids will be exiting schools later. Want to participate in some after school activities or clubs that aren't physically in school? A HS kid wants to hold down a little part time job so she can save to buy that first car or afford that summer trip she wants? Any activities out of school become much more difficult to manage if the exiting time moves any later. And these extracurriculars are also a big part of many peoples' lives.
2) I think it's naive to think that kids will get much extra sleep regardless of the school starting time. Their need for socialization and leisure activities out of school doesn't suddenly vanish if school starts later: they just get shifted. If you tell kids that they can manage to wake up at 9 instead of 7 and still make it to school on time, they'll just tend to stay up about 2 hours later playing games, watching movies, or chatting with friends. The end result might be about the same amount of sleep.
3) Logistically, it's hard enough for most parents to see their kids for a few minutes and deal with getting their kids out of the door in the morning (or driving them to school) when their wakeup times roughly coincide and they can get a little breakfast together or have a few minutes to chat. Trying to arrange a much different school schedule for kids is going to present a lot more difficulties to working parents, particularly if the kid has some special needs, is a tad rebellious about going to school, or you have to drive them for some other reason.
Just thinking out loud here, but I'd say that getting rid of the nightly busy work (homework) is a better way to fix teens schedules. They already spend enough time at school learning. Stop forcing them to waste an hour or two every night regurgitating mostly busy work and then feeling like crap and needing to stay up another few hours decompressing. Let them get their fill of fun and socialization after a long day. Without the burden of homework, most teens have enough extra time in the day to get a little extra rest and still have enough to unwind and feel like a human.
1) They wouldn't need to get out any later. Most of the school day is basically baby sitting and they could easily fit the actual teaching in <4 hours.
2) There have been bunches of studies that show teenagers don't get proper sleep specifically when they get up early. There is something about that age that requires sleeping later to get good rest. No matter when they go to bed.
3) Who says their waking coincides with the current times? Doesn't for us. Something like 9:30 or 10:00 would.
> 1) They wouldn't need to get out any later. Most of the school day is basically baby sitting and they could easily fit the actual teaching in <4 hours.
You have reinvented the German Gymnasium (grammar school). Congratulations.
I think we're in agreement that sleep is an issue for a lot of kids, but the devil is in a ton of details about how society is organized.
To comment on your points...
> 1) They wouldn't need to get out any later. Most of the school day is basically baby sitting and they could easily fit the actual teaching in <4 hours.
I agree that they wouldn't need to get out any later and that most of the school day is a waste and can be radically compressed, but I sincerely doubt that this is what would happen. If we're talking about showing up to school later and leaving at the same time, I'd say that's a big win over the current situation. Please tell me I've misread things and this is what we're talking about. I'd be happy to have that be the outcome, but I doubt it.
> 2) There have been bunches of studies that show teenagers don't get proper sleep specifically when they get up early. There is something about that age that requires sleeping later to get good rest. No matter when they go to bed.
I've seen similar tendencies in the studies I've come across as well, but I'm not convinced that the stats are interpreted correctly based on human nature. My thinking is that the people who need sleep the most probably aren't going to go to bed at a sane time and end up with a large net sleep gain. That said, I'm a little open-minded about this point applying to many (but not all people)
> 3) Who says their waking coincides with the current times? Doesn't for us. Something like 9:30 or 10:00 would.
Everybody's job and life situation is different, but I'd bet that a lot of lower income people have to deal with getting to work earlier, and have more transportation issues (trying to connect to multiple busses and trains, etc) and more complex childcare requirements necessitating less overall time flexibility in the morning.
I'd wager it's largely the technical, white-collar class that can show up later and generally has a quicker path to work (work in pajamas in living room, or hop into the car in the driveway and drive to work with no connecting delays)
Even if you only take courses that aren't wastes of time, there just isn't that much to do on a typical day. I remember when I was in school I was taking something like 5 AP courses senior year but still had multiple study halls per day, a useless homeroom which was basically a buffer for people getting to school late, a gym class, and a 40 minute lunch. Almost half the day was time not spent in lecture. A lot of the time is literally babysitting.
This is how people can go to college and spend comparatively little time in class yet learn more than they did in high school.
I was one of those kids. Only because taking the bus was a pain in the ass and my parents loved me enough to put up with it, at least until I could drive.
Bus was awful. Kids had no respect for the driver or other kids. Plus it easily tripled the commute time.
Yes. The bus my kids would have to take to High School served both middle and high school. They would have been on the bus for about 40 minutes and arrived at school 30 minutes before the first period started. School was about 15 minutes away by car.
If I drove them (or when they were old enough to drive on their own), they could sleep nearly an hour later than if they had to take the bus. Since it wasn't much of a detour on my way to work, that's what I did.
Did you live in an area sparsely populated by families with children that matched your child’s age, or did you choose (or forced to use for desegregation) a school that was far away? The fact that transit was an option makes me think it was the latter.
I spent most of my school aged years in an city with a mediocre transit system. Most parents did not drive their kids to school except in very bad weather. Also, most people attended the school closest to their home. This meant the mediocre transit system used buses for special school routes usable only by students. I rarely took this bus as I preferred to bike or walk in about the same amount of time the bus would take.
Where I live now, something similar happens at least for the kids that are bussed across town to achieve a somewhat consistent racial mix in all schools.
Has everyone driving their kids to school eroded the viability of walking, biking, or taking a school bus?
A school day ending at 2pm already has this issue - this just splits it between the start and end of the day. For some parents that may be better, for some it may be worse. There's also the possibility for before-school activities or in-school breakfast.
I think the bigger issue is unsupervised minors. Not all high schoolers are mature enough to be left alone and go to school. I suppose this could be solved by pre-care, but that make this bill completely moot.
If you can't trust a highschool aged kid to go to school on their own, early start times aren't going to change anything. Heck, you can drive them to the building and watch them walk inside and they'll just walk right out the back. Delinquent kids dgaf. Now for the not totally delinquent but still up for sketchy borderline behaviour kids, finishing early and having couple hours between the end of class and when their parents come home from work is when all the dumb stuff happens. Sleeping in and getting home around the same time as their parents leaves a lot fewer opportunities for hijinks.
If the kids really have a hard time waking up (the point t of this law), then it's possible they over sleep. Many parents might not be comfortable with their kid cooking breakfast unsupervised too.
If they're in after school activities and/or have a job, then it seem unlikely that they would get into trouble anyways. Pushing the time back will make these after school activities unfeasible for many, and limit opportunities.
I'm failing to reconcile the image of a hypothetical teenager who is both so irresponsible and incompetent that you can't trust them to get up or make breakfast on their own without burning down the house while simultaneously being capable of having an after school job.
If you can't leave them unsupervised in the mornings, surely they can't be left alone after school either. Net net, there's going to be some time they're unsupervised. May as well let them get some rest. Maybe the lack of sleep deprivation will even encourage better decision-making.
I see the argument you are making and just want to suggest that this law is trying to help out the kids who are both capable of getting to school on their own regardless of start time, who would also benefit from the extra sleep. I suspect that this is the majority of the population of teenagers. Public schools are not really a free market where kids get to pick and choose based on features like start times. Most are selected because it is the only practical option for the family's means. In the absence of market pressure, using legislation to improve people's lives isn't wrong.
If this is such a contentious issue, then why not allow the parents in each district to decide? That's really what I'm getting at - the state is making this decision for everyone by usurping the parents representation at the district level.
If it is such a contentious issue, then why go through all the extra time and effort to decide it for each and every district? Parents still have a voice and vote at the state level do they not?
Because what works for one district might not work for another based on the demographics and culture of the location.
Their voice at the state level is highly diluted by non-interested parties. Voting for school board members tends to be more focused and doesn't have as many people voting based on non-school issues like you would for a general representative.
These are high school students they are going to be living on their own soon. I think being able to feed themselves is a skill they should probably develop.
my ten year can cook breakfast, on a gas stove too. and besides there are plenty of breakfast options that don't require cooking. worst case, they reheat in the microwave what parents cooked earlier.
if a 15 year old can't be unsupervised at home, then their parents have different problems besides letting them cook for themselves.
>Not all high schoolers are mature enough to be left alone and go to school
As an anecdote, 100% of my class was coming to the school and back without being supervised since age 8. This was in 90s and not in the US, but the gap of "mature enough to go to school" between my experience and the statement feels a bit high, somehow.
Yep. And it’s 100% normal for early prior year school aged kids in Japan to cross town on the subway on their own. The American obsession with helicoptering their kids all the way through their first job is super weird and unhealthy.
Could we just stop? Please? I know it's cool to talk shit about Americans constantly but it gets old. I want to expect better from HN.
> The American obsession with helicoptering their kids all the way through their first job is super weird and unhealthy.
My kids, along with many others, were getting themselves to & from school without my supervision starting in third grade. Earlier, even, for my son since his sister is two years older and was with him.
This is normal. What is the fascination that so many Europeans (and others) have with making wild unsupported assertions about what Americans do and then build an entire critique from that?
I’m American and I’ve seen enough helicopter stupidity over the years to be confident saying it’s a problem. Is it the norm? Maybe not. But it’s common enough to be a thing.
Most of the helicopter stupidity i see comes from people without kids. As in, you're a terrible parent because you weren't constantly watching your kids and they did something kids do that I don't like.
Late 80s, Netherlands. As of the age of 6, I was free roaming on my tiny bicycle. I could go wherever I please, zero supervision, just be back in time for diner. And of course without any technology (smartphone).
Yes, maturity in the US seems delayed compared to many places. I feel it's because the laws and nosy neighbors have basically made it impossible to give kids responsibility. Nobody wants to hire kids because of the labor laws. Kids don't want to work because they get everything handed to them or the cost of stuff like transportation is too high. Let your young kid play alone? You might have the cops called on you.
>Not all high schoolers are mature enough to be left alone and go to school.
That's insane. I walked to school at 6. At 8, I walked to the bus stop and rode a public transit bus to school. The helicoptering has gone way to far and it is creating generations of crippled kids. I wonder if this is solely caused by the media pushing fear or if there are other factors.
We’re talking about a pretty small window of time. 2 hours at most. And a kid who’s going to willfully skip school is going to do so whether or not school starts at 8:30 instead of 7:30.
In most cases, this should work out better for parents. With elementary school starting latest (as was the norm in many places a decade ago), the little kids end up in pre-care AND after-care. Now, they’ll start earlier, possibly avoiding pre-care.
Sure, but you probably would have gotten up to mischief regardless of the first bell. And in the case of the morning, would you choose mischief or an extra hour of sleep? Just a guess, but I bet most kids take the sleep.
This is for high school. But not all high schoolers are responsible enough, so still a point. Also, the majority of people have to be at work at 8am or earlier.
Who has to be at work nowadays, other than people who tend to work in jobs which mean shift patterns.
Sometimes I have to start work at 4am, does that mean that schools should start at 3am to make it convenient for me? What about when I finish at 11pm? What if I'm working overnight?
You helpfully cut the other than people who tend to work in jobs which mean shift patterns
Everyone I know that works in a location works shift patterns or other non 9-5 jobs. My wife might start at 7.30 am one day, or another day not finish to 9pm.
If you're working 9-5 every day it's increasingly unlikely you need to be in a specific place to do so. Those who do work in specific places tend to have to cover a far larger range than 9-5 and thus require alternate child care arrangements anyway.
No young people need to get up early to build character. If you let them stay up late they will get into trouble and become lazy watching TV and playing video games or whatever or worse they will be out late drinking and smoking marijuana. High school especially should start at 7:00 AM.
Just make them before-school programs. There is no reason every student should be affected by after school programs which affect a subset of those students.
Exactly. Sunshine is proven to supress melatonin production (no matter whether night owl or early bird). Melatonin is usually produced at night and encourages you to feel sleepy. So later waking up times are certainly helpful, even if the person goes to bed a bit later.
I am VERY close to this situation, I'm married to a California teacher. Most of the kids hate this idea.
1. They know they and everyone else will just stay up later.
2. School will go on too late in the day, sports participation is dropping appreciably.
3. Those who work after school or school/sports are quitting sports to work, and planning ways to leave when they did previously to go to work.
This is incredibly short-sighted, and will not last a year.
Education is more important than playing football.
Working is more important than playing football (for those who need the money).
Anecdotally, when I was in high school, with a 7:30 AM start, around 25% of the class was asleep through 1st period. And this was in honors/AP courses with the kids who wanted to learn, get good grades, and generally be successful.
That doesn't match my experience at all. I started at 7:15 (special elective) and school started at 8. The only kids who would fall asleep were the kids that stayed up late playing videogames, abusing caffeine (and/or other drugs), and didn’t care about grades.
Maybe. But, we’re not talking about eliminating sports. Or after-school employment. Only shortening the window to do both. And the Venn diagram of kids that “need” to play sports and need to work pales in comparison to the total student body, who all (in aggregate) benefit from more morning sleep.
I'm confused by this. My high school in a different state started at 8:30, ended at 3:30, and sports was everything to that school. Like one of my math teachers was primarily a teacher so they could be the basketball coach. Starting at 8:30 is really not much of a problem.
The problem with that approach is the debate tends to be led by football parents who want to make sure there’s ample time for the kids to beat each other senseless on the field. Literally, that’s the argument we got in Fairfax County when similar proposals were floated.
This sounds like a vast over simplification and plain scapegoating. All the school start time surveys I've seen typically have an even split up to moderately favoring normal start times. Half the school is not on the football team.
