California Just Voted Not To Start School Until After 8:30am
California has had about enough of kids showing up to school exhausted.
With most schools starting earlier and earlier every year, they’ve decided to ban schools from starting from before 8:30am so students can get more sleep.
Lawmakers in California passed a whole bunch of bills, but with California often leading the way and being all about pushing the limits, they felt it was important that kids stop being pushed to theirs.
Even though this wasn’t one of the higher profile bills, it IS a bill that can change a lot of things. Including when parents go to work, because a lot of parents rely on school starting before they have to be in the office.
In fact almost 80 percent of middle and high schools start earlier than 8:30am, but if the governor signs the bill then schools will have three years to make this happen. Although, this doesn’t apply to rural schools or to extra curricular activities.
It also doesn’t change the actual length of the school day, so it potentially means that kids will be there later.
It has been seen as the single most cost effective thing that can be done to improve high school graduation rates. But people against the bill say that it shouldn’t really be up to the government to decide things like this.
They think something like this should be planned more on a local level.
So, what do you think? Should kids be starting school later?
Night owl moms everywhere are begging for it to happen!
So, will they just stay up later, and still be tired? If they get out later, will there be time and daylight for extra carcular activities?
I think as Howard Gardener taught us, each child is a unique symphony of abilities. Pat Wolfe and Pamela Nevills, who have done brain research on toddlers in school actually say that children optimum level of sleep is 9 hours, kids most days are dragging their feet also because of dietary and physical education issues. In some, cases it might be more beneficial the later sleep time. What I have learned is that parents who have active social lives at night or celebrate holidays like Hannukah have kids that stay up late, therefore, their children would benefit from sending their kids to school early. I personally teach early so a later time would be perfect for me to send my munchkin off to school calmly and do my job appropriately.
As parents, it is our job to see that our kids get enough sleep. I know as an adult I need 8-9 hours of sleep to have the proper amount of sleep. Kids need more sleep than an adult so depending on what time they need to get up should depend on what time they go to bed
Parents already drop kids off at school sometimes as much as an hour early )even though the doors are closed, there’s no supervision, and regardless of weather. I don’t think kids will get more sleep if parents have to get to work.
Teach them to go to bed earlier. When they get their first job are we going to adjust everything so they can sleep in. Our state continues to enable bad behavior. Make a schedule stick to it and be responsible!
They need to turn off the electronics/tv and go to bed earlier. It is not uncommon for primary grade students to go to bed at 10:00 pm.