High School Times Case Study

Should Montgomery County Public Schools Stick With Later Bell Times?

From morning until night, teenagers have to work relentlessly. Schoolwork, extracurricular activities, and maintaining a social life are just some of the many stressors in the life of a teenager. From the sound of this, it would seem almost as if teenagers have no time to sleep. In fact, this is partially true. Studies conducted by the Center for Advancing Health have shown that only about eight percent of high schoolers in the United States get the required amount of sleep to be deemed healthy. This is an exceptionally low number for an entire nation. Not getting enough sleep on average can be extremely detrimental to the wellbeing of a student and for a generation as

a whole. In light of this, in the state of Maryland, Montgomery County has proposed that high school start times be pushed back later than what they are now, at 7:45 AM. With the newly proposed bell schedule, Montgomery County would be benefiting both the health of high school students and their overall performance in school.
High school students do not obtain the sufficient amount of sleep that they should, which is highly destructive to the wellbeing of the population of teenagers. The majority of high schoolers stay up late finishing homework, as the pressure of schoolwork in high school is crippling. After staying up late, sometimes even after midnight, these sleep-deprived teenagers are then required to wake up bright and early the next day to go back to school. This cycle is repeated every weekday. To even function in these conditions seems to require superhuman abilities, yet this is the daily life of a teenager. Research conducted by the National Sleep Foundation has shown that on average, teenagers must get between eight to ten hours of sleep a night in order to maintain their wellness. Some high schoolers do not even get half of that in a night. With the new bell schedule, high school students would be getting more sleep than in the past, which can have a considerably large positive impact on the health of students. In fact, in the op-ed titled “To Keep Teenagers Alert, Let Them Sleep In” Jan Hoffman states that the “later a school’s start time, the better off the students [are] on many measures, including mental health, car crash rates, [and] attendance.” In the society of today, these immediate effects that Hoffman writes about are incredibly crucial to the wellbeing of students. The teenagers of today suffer from the highest rates of depression and anxiety and the rates are only going up. With some extra time for sleep, the stressors that high schoolers have could have less of an impact on the wellbeing of the student since he or she would have more time to get more sufficient rest than before, causing stress to take less of a toll on the health of the student. Also, the car crash rate would go down, which is a serious problem with teenagers today. These teenagers would be more refreshed and alert whilst on the road, creating a safer environment for their own well being and safety along with the others on the road. With more time to get refreshed, students would be able to arrive to school on time, instead of barely waking up in the morning and hardly making it to school on time. In fact, in her “The Early Bird Gets the Bad Grade,” Nancy Kalish writes that “Some [students] are so sleepy they don’t even show up.” This can result in more stress in students as they miss out in instruction time in classes and are required to frantically make up the work later, causing a harmful impact on the well being of students. Thus, the later start times could result in a more relaxed, refreshed, and less stressed population of teenagers whose well being would be positively impacted through the later school start times. Not only would these later school start times be beneficial to the wellbeing and health of high school students, but they would also be a major asset to the overall performance of students in schools.
The proposed schedule in Montgomery County to start schools at a later time in the morning would have a majorly beneficial impact to the overall performance of students in school, and in turn, the schools itself. In her op-ed, Hoffman informs the reader that according to Jessica Payne, a sleep researcher and psychology professor at the University of Notre Dame, that “without enough sleep...teenagers are losing the ability not only to solidify information but to transform and restructure it, extracting inferences and insights into problems.” When a person sleeps, the information that has been collected in the day before is stored in the brain for later use. Without the proper amount of sleep required in order to do this, high school students would not be able to retain the information that they learn in seven different classes from the day before. Not retaining this information could cause poor test grades and test scores in the future. With more time to sleep, the information would be better stored in the brain and thus, cause a more retentive generation of students. As a result of students doing better in school, standardized test scores would go up, causing schools to do better and get better rankings. In fact, Kalish writes in her op-ed that after later school times were implemented in Jessamine County of Kentucky from 7:30 AM to 8:40 AM and, “attendance immediately went up, as did scores on standardized tests, which have continued to rise each year.” Thus, if students were able to do better in school due to the later start times, the schools would achieve more, and students would be going to school in an environment where they could be more relaxed and work more efficiently. Therefore, a later school start time would cause the overall performance of students to increase, and as a result, the schools would be providing a healthier environment in order to accommodate the bettered standards for a more relaxed and more successful high school population. In spite of all the benefits of these later school start times, there are naysayers of this beneficial policy.

Some contrarians claim that a later school start time would cause Montgomery County a large amount of money which the county cannot afford to give up.

In fact, Donna St. George claims that implementing this later school start time policy causes the district to face “budget shortfalls” when the county “[can] not afford [such] costly approaches,” in her op-ed “More Sleep for Teens, More Hardship for Parents As School Bell Times Change.” As a response to this, in the op-ed written by the Washington Post Editorial Board “Later School hours in Montgomery County Are Worth the Cost,” the Editorial Board calculates the numbers, and concludes that implementing these later start times will be from “$5.2 million [to] $5.85 million, respectively,” which is “not an insurmountable sum given the system’s $2 billion-plus budget.” From such a large budget, about five million dollars seems to be a small price to pay for the well being of high school students- a whole level of schooling. In fact, if the later school times are implemented, Montgomery County can receive a surplus of money from better standardized test results, as an effect of relaxed, refreshed, and less stressed out students who are actually healthier. Since better standardized test results means better funding, Montgomery County would be able to gain more money than it would spend, thus deeming the whole argument that the county cannot “afford” implementing such a highly expensive policy

invalid.

In conclusion, later bell times in Montgomery County results in healthier students who can do better in school, which is a beneficial result for both students and schools alike.

This is a highly important topic because the high schoolers of today are the future of tomorrow. A generation of sleep-deprived students are not the ones we want running the country. A generation of students who never got a chance to retain the information they had learnt in school due to the fact that they did not get enough are not the ones we want running our country. A generation of students who have developed sicknesses and diseases due to being sleep-deprived are not the ones we want running our country. Montgomery County is ranked as one of the highest in public schooling in the United States. We do not want the students who can be arguably said to be the best in the nation to be coming out of high school as tired without learning anything. Thus, a later bell time would cause a much healthier and happier generation with more successful schools. We must determine whether the future will hold success or not reaching the highest potential it can - to answer this question, we must start with the health and achievement of the student- which can be brought back to the amount of sleep the student is receiving.After all, the children of today are the future of tomorrow- we must choose wisely how we desire to shape them in the face of

tomorrow.