With the abundance of snow days this year, GEHS has had to find ways to meet the required number of hours that students have to be at school. One way they seem to be doing this is by lengthening the final schedule by adding a much longer seminar. However, a way this could have been prevented, or at least minimized, is through late starts.
Late starts are when schools open later than usual, often due to things like inclement weather. This helps ensure the safety of students by allowing them to come to school after the sun has helped make the day less cold or snowy, while also allowing them to continue learning. Late starts prevent schools from having to send students through dangerous circumstances to learn, while also not closing school for the day altogether.
Many schools in Kansas, such as schools in the Olathe and Blue Valley districts, practice late starts on snowy days like those. However, GEHS does not. Instead, they keep school open the whole day while giving parents the option to send their children to school or keep them home. This results in teachers continuing their lessons while practically half the class is not there. That leads many students to get behind on their school work, and leads many teachers to get behind on their lesson plans since they have to get their abundance of missing students caught up. If GEHS practiced late starts, however, more students would likely go to school on those days, and since the students would be attending at the same time, they would thus be on the same page with schoolwork, meaning that many fewer people would have to be caught up.
Late starts are not only beneficial for keeping students and teachers caught up, however. They allow students to get more sleep, even if it is only for a day, which could help them be more energized for their classes and more productive in them. According to apa.org, students who go to schools that start “…between 8:30 a.m. and 8:59 a.m. had longer sleep duration, less negative mood[s], and better developmental outcomes…” This is because sleep has a great effect on people’s mental health, and many teenagers in high school do not get much of it. Therefore, this opportunity for them to get more sleep could positively impact their mental health as well, even if the extra sleep is just for a day or two.
While late starts definitely have many pros for high schoolers, however, it is important to see how they would impact elementary or middle schoolers as well, as the decision of whether or not to have them is often one that affects the district as a whole. Therefore, while late starts could definitely be beneficial for high school students, parents of elementary and middle school students may have a difficult time driving their children to school later in the day because of work. The positives of late starts, though, are too valuable to ignore and should thus be placed against these cons to see which is a more viable option.
