Changing school times

“Beep! Beep! Beep!” Every morning millions of children wake up to this sound, getting ready to go to school. Children (especially adolescent) tend to try to rest for “just five more minutes.” This will usually turn out to children missing the bus because they fell back asleep. Many think school time being pushed back would be helpful to children, but some think it won’t be as helpful. Changing school times does not only affect the children, but affects other people as well. According to Elizabeth Baroni (2004), Fred Danner and Barbara Phillips (2008), earlier start times may result in fewer hours of sleep, as students may not fully compensate for earlier rising times with earlier bedtimes. If the counties change the school times, it will result in changing the times that after school activities start and end. In the winter, it gets darker earlier which results in children having their after school activities in the dark. Children will not be able to spend much time with family because of the times that they will be occupied with homework and school. Not only will students have less time, but teachers as well will not have much time to grade since of the school time. This controversy has been going on for quite a while. According to Opposing Viewpoints (2012), the school system in Arlington County first wanted to push back times in 1999, they had to take into consideration the start times for all schools and outside programs. One of the challenges Arlington County had, was competition for interscholastic sports and facilities use. Elementary, middle, and high schools all start at different times for transportation conservation reasons. If schools were to all start at the same time there would be more busses that would have to be used to transport all the children to their schools. Students’ performance in school is very important. Adolescents that are in middle and high school tend to sleep as late as 12:00. The recommended hours of sleep are 8-9 hours. If