Students, as well as teachers, share the struggle of having to deal with early mornings before the beginning of a school day. It is scientifically proven that teenagers nowadays do not fully function until later in the morning.
Local Illinois schools such as: Wheeling High School, Rolling Meadows High School, and many more took this study into consideration and attempted to or successfully incorporated a much later start time for their daily bell schedule.
Depending on how the schools react to this change, the first bell would remain to ring at 8:45 a.m for future years.
“I believe the plan is to pilot this for the 17-18 and 18-19 school years and then discuss further implementation,” said Wheeling High School principal Angela Sisi.
This alteration of start times can affect the way some students act in class.
“I personally enjoy later starts because I feel more awake and capable of doing class work and tests in the morning,” said Wheeling High School junior Nicole Guest.
Not only would the later starts be involving the student life throughout the school, but also the teacher’s lifestyle.
“It’s going to affect our school as a whole for the better because some of our teachers live a little while away and that means they’d have a little more time to sleep in in the morning, which is great because having a happy teacher in a student’s environment will help the student strive more to succeed,” said Rolling Meadows High School senior Hannah Cohen.
However, on the downside of beginning school later, school athletics and extracurricular activities will have to extend their times to later in the afternoon on a daily basis.
“This might not be the best thing for sports and other activities because they already run late as it is since school lets out at 2:45 p.m, so if school gets dismissed even later, that leaves practices and other clubs to get out much later,” Cohen said.