In the past few years, many studies and articles have been released that strongly favor having high schools start after 8:30 am and all of the different benefits surrounding the later start time. However, Snohomish School District is one of the few Washington Public School districts left that has their high schools start before this time, with Glacier Peak and Snohomish High School starting promptly at 7:30 am every day. According to the APA (American Psychological Association), “Adolescents between the ages 13 and 18 should sleep 8 to 10 hours of sleep each night,” but this early start time at our school makes this hard to achieve.

We decided to talk to the student body directly to get their opinions so we posted a poll on our Instagram story @gpstudentmedia. Immediately after posting the results, they were what we expected with the majority of students voting for wanting the start time to be 8:30 am or later. We left the poll up for twenty-four hours and after this time had passed we collected the results, 238 students voted and multiple also answered our questions with direct opinions and reasoning. 69 students said that they would like to continue having their high school start at 7:30 am while 169 voted that they would prefer high school starting at 8:30 am or later. Twenty-nine percent voted that they would like to keep the time how it is and seventy-one percent voted that they want it to be a later start time (the 8:30 am start time).

Multiple people who we interviewed were strongly opinionated on wanting the start time to be 8:30 or later. “Is this even a question? Why would we want to wake up earlier instead of sleeping in?” Andrew Biryuk said. Other students also felt like they were happier and felt more ready for the day if we were to have a later start time. “If we started at 8:30 or later I feel like we all would pay more attention and be able to understand things in our earlier classes better,” Malia Forbes said. When SSD declares a late start for the high schools it means that the school day starts at 9:30 am instead of 7:30 am. “Whenever we have late start days I noticed that everyone is in a much better mood and is much more productive because they got more sleep,” Forbes added.

Many different scientific studies from doctors and universities also show how many advantages and benefits there are for students if their high schools start at or after 8:30 am. According to the APA, “Schools starting between 8:30 a.m. and 8:59 a.m. had longer sleep duration, less negative mood, and better developmental outcomes including socioemotional health, cognitive development, behavioral health, and physical health.” This also stated that the number of students falling asleep in class was also significantly decreased and all students’ concentration during their classes and other activities during the day was improved.

Conversations of school start time laws have happened across the country, however, California and Florida are currently the only two states that have enacted laws that actually push back the start time that school districts are required to follow. More than 500 school districts across the country have moved their high school start times back, the question is, will Snohomish School District ever change our high school start time?