After seeing how teenagers are impacted by having early classes, in 2022 California implemented a law that all California schools will be required to start school at 8:30 am at the earliest. Last year, Granada changed the school starting time from 8:00 am to 8:30 am for the first time. After one year of this change, Granada students still have mixed opinions over whether or not the thirty extra minutes of sleep helps. 

A survey was sent out to Granada students asking about their schedule and how much they sleep. Most Granada students wake up between 6:00 am-7:00 am and on average, get around 6 hours of sleep. This is not the ideal amount of sleep students should be getting. According to the CDC and Kids Health, teenagers should be getting 8-10 hours of sleep per night, with 9 hours being the ideal amount of hours. In the survey, most students said they would prefer to get 8 hours of sleep but don’t because of their schedules.

Some factors that can affect student’s sleep are homework, school starting times, extracurriculars, and screen time. On average Granada students spend 4 hours doing homework. Many students also spend 2-3 hours in sports or extracurricular activities. Almost everyone who participated in the survey also reported that they watch screens before they go to bed. Using screens before bed has been proven to make falling asleep harder, causing sleepiness during the day, especially for teenagers. The schedule change last year pushed back start times 30 minutes. With all these other factors affecting sleep, Granada students are split on whether the schedule change actually helps. 

Half of the students in the survey said it didn’t help while the other half said it was helpful. Students who said no, said that they didn’t even notice the change and that now, school ends too late for them. Students who said yes said that they needed the time to relax and get ready for the day. It is also important to note that students on both sides wanted school to start later, at 9:00 am even.

Balancing school and sleep has been an issue debated about for some time now. There are a lot of things that could be changed about schedules and student habits to make sure teenagers get enough sleep but the California government recognizing that students need to sleep to get through school is a good start. In the future let’s hope that students and staff can work together to help figure out how to make sure kids get the education they need without having to sacrifice their sleep schedule.