Editor’s note: Wellesley Middle School Social Studies students as part of a Civics Action Project have this week taken over The Swellesley Report‘s letters-to-the-editor page. The students are well-versed in their topics, have carefully researched all angles, and are ready to present their opinions to the community. Thank you to the WMS Social Studies teachers for organizing this community-based project.
To the editor:
My group and I have a goal to delay Wellesley Middle School start times to allow kids to obtain enough sleep, which will result in students becoming healthier, more focused, and more successful. Also, one of our other main focuses is bringing awareness to the effects of not getting this needed sleep. To better accomplish this goal we hope to have Massachusetts residents advocate and convince their representatives to vote in favor of bill S360, which is trying to push back start times for public and charter schools in Massachusetts.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Center for Disease Control advise that no schools start before 8-8:30am due to adolescents’ natural sleep cycles. However, contradictory to this, school schedules in Massachusetts have been set around early start times for decades, which has led to many kids becoming sleep-deprived, including myself.
According to Gale, 60% of middle school students and more than 70% of high school students identify as sleep-deprived. What is sleep deprivation? Sleep deprivation is a state where a person does not have enough quality sleep to meet their physical and cognitive needs. Imagine, as a young person waking up before the sun 5 days a week, and then going through 7.5 hours of school, extracurriculars, and homework just to repeat the next day. To add, schools claim the reason schools start so early is to maximize learning time, but it is having the opposite effect on kids. If this is true, and they do want to maximize learning time, the best alternative is to extend school in the afternoon instead of in the morning, when they are at their lowest point of alertness. Sleep is a necessary part of your well-being, and when teenagers are deprived of it, it affects every aspect of their lives. The delay will not only positively impact their welfare, but grades will improve, and rates of depression will decrease. It is a simple change, but could have a profound impact on countless lives.
We hope that in the future, adolescents will be able to wake up in the morning and go to school without having to skip breakfast or complain about how they got little to no sleep. Instead, their morning will become full of excitement for the day ahead of them. We hope that districts and school boards will take our needs seriously and consider making this necessary change that will only do good.
Gabby Houle
