During a school board meeting on Tuesday, March 16th, Commissioner Sandra Lee Fewer pushed for the idea to start the school day at 9 a.m. and end one hour later in order to accommodate teenagers’ inability to wake up in the morning. Although Principal Erika Lovrin believes that "starting at 9 a.m. would give the school a different feel", and that "the idea makes sense", she also says that "there will still be tardiness, no matter how late we start". Counselor Jay Kozak believes that “more people would come on time, but many people would still be late”.

        This new idea of starting school later came when the school board was discussing ways to save money. By changing the high school bell hours, the district will be able to cut down on transportation costs and in turn have more money to put towards education.

       Everyday, teenagers encounter many different struggles. But, no matter who you are, you will still have to overcome the first challenge of the day-waking up! This struggle to make it to school on time has prompted the Board of Education to propose a one-hour later school start time.

        Currently, George Washington High School has adopted a schedule in an attempt to help students get to school on time. You can either start at 7:30 or 8:30 a.m., and end at either 2:17 p.m. or 3:16 p.m., respectively. Counselor Kozak strongly believes that "two starting times should give you more opportunities, because you can decide when you start".

         Past studies have shown that it is important for grade school and middle school students to wake up early, because that is when they learn the best. However, the case is different for students in high school. In a study conducted on 259 teenagers by Zaw W. Htwe, MD, of Norwalk Hospital's Sleep Disorders Center in Norwalk, Conn., she concluded that it is important for teenagers to wake up later, and that by starting school later, it will cut down on “sleepiness”.

        Although starting school later may seem like a good idea now, the SFUSD must consider all conflicts that people would encounter with a later start time. Lovrin mentioned that “sports and practices would have to be in the dark, and people wouldn’t be able to get to games. Teachers would also have to have their meetings before school”. Kozak also added that “this poses an issue for students with other responsibilities after school, such as a job”.

        GWHS Athletic director Taylan Plasch says that this would create many problems for sports teams all around the district. Practices would now go until 6:30 or even 7 p.m., yet it gets dark at 5:30 in fall. Plasch believes that “less people would join teams, because they won’t want to take the bus home so late after practice”. Another issue is games. If games continued to be at 3:30, “student athletes would miss way too many classes, which is a huge problem”.

        GWHS junior, Chris Hernandez believes that schools should start at 10 a.m., and that this later schedule would help him improve his grades because “starting early affects your grades when you’re late. Being late to my first class causes my grades to drop”.

        Before everyone adopts Hernandez’s attitude about this situation, they should really consider the problems that starting later will create. At the moment the SFUSD says that this idea “warrants further exploration” and that nothing is for sure at the moment.

         If you like this idea, or if you are strongly against it, contact the school board with your opinions.