New Proposed Start Time: Beneficial or Not?

Lately, the Park City School District has been discussing pushing back the start time for Treasure Mountain and the Park City High School - specifically, instead of starting at 7:30 every morning and going to 1:45 on Mondays and 2:25 on other days, the schools would start and end an hour later, from 8:30 to 2:45 (Mondays) or 3:25 (any other days). There are two sides to this, however. Most kids love to sleep in and get as much rest as they can so they can be performing at their best all day, but there are many others who do not favor this idea of starting later because of the consequence of getting out later. Most of the people against a later start time are kids with early release - they would have to miss too much class if the school day extended a full hour longer than it does now, especially when they already need to leave early. This could prevent them from receiving the amount of credit that they need from their classes. Many other students simply don't want to stay in school until 4:00. Everyone in favor is of a different mindset: they either don’t care, or they really need their beauty rest.

Many teens and parents in Park City already complain about the 7:30 start. At this age, a lot of kids stay awake until late at night and then have to wake up seven hours later. There are so many people that don’t get the eight hours of sleep that they need to continue developing. It has also been scientifically proven that a student’s brain isn’t fully awake until ten o’clock, which, on the current schedule, is halfway through second period, meaning students aren't fully awake for any part of their first period classes. When there is important testing at the end of the year, especially in high school, a later start time is extremely beneficial. Teens will be able to get the most out of their school day because they will most likely be more focused on their work later in the day.

On the other hand, parent release is a program which allows kids that do sports outside of school to leave early and practice. Many sports - like skiing and snowboarding - simply cannot be done after certain hours, as most ski resorts close at a certain time that happens to be early enough in the day that most students can never practice during the school week. To get the most out of their training time, many kids leave school early and start practicing right away. For the kids getting out early, an early start time is very helpful to accommodate their training schedule; when you graduate, you need a certain number of credits, and when you get early release, it can be tricky to make that work. The sooner students already get out, the fewer classes they have to miss. Missing as few classes as possible is crucial for graduating; if a later start time was placed, the early release kids would most likely have to quit their sport, or find a way to get as much training as they can, which won’t be much. If school ended at 3:25 on every day except Mondays, and the mountain closed at four, those students would have an issue. A later start time would be taking the opportunity away from early release kids to do a sport they love as much as they can.

By Caroline and Mackenna