The endless school start time debate

Ryan Midwood, Staff

It’s one of your worst nightmares, you wake up only to look at your clock to realize you overslept. Waking up like that is guaranteed to put you in a terrible mood for the rest of the day.

Being a student is hard; exams, piles of daily homework that’s graded, and worst of all waking up early in the morning, Most modern high schools require students to wake up around 6:30, and every day some students struggle with waking up and feeling alert for the rest of the day. A study at the University of Washington showed that when the Seattle school district increased start times by an hour the average student got  35 more minutes of sleep, and student attendance rose along with grades.

 Some students at Tahoma believe school start times are reasonable. Sophomore Jordan Moore said ‘I believe school start times are fine the way they are, I usually wake up around 6:50 am and arrive at school around 7:20 so I’m usually at school on time. So for students like me, it’s not really a big issue for us to make it to school on time. Although I don’t usually feel awake until around second period, first period I’m very slow, But not everyone agrees with Moore, sophomore Kaitlyn Lattermore said,  “ I would definitely be benefited by a later school start time, I’d make the school start time at 8:00 so I could have 20 extra minutes in the morning. Because I don’t usually feel awake in the morning.”

 How do you feel in the morning? Whether you use that extra time for sleep or spend time doing makeup, I believe we could all use a little more sleep to keep our mind and body healthy!