Ring! 6AM. Montgomery County teenagers are waking up before the sun rises, but studies show that they are naturally inclined to stay awake until 11:30 PM because of biorhythms. And 6.5 hours of sleep doesn’t seem reasonable.

But what happens if school starts later each day? That is what Seniors John Rothman and Rajarshi Chattopadhyay, creators of a Facebook group called “Start MCPS Schools One Hour Later”, want to know. During their summer internship with Dr. Linda Berg-Cross of Howard University, they were asked to "come up with ways to spread the news about how sleep deprivation is severely detrimental to the health", says Chattopadhyay.

Ring! 6AM. Montgomery County teenagers are waking up before the sun rises, but studies show that they are naturally inclined to stay awake until 11:30 PM because of biorhythms. And 6.5 hours of sleep doesn’t seem reasonable.

But what happens if school starts later each day? That is what Seniors John Rothman and Rajarshi Chattopadhyay, creators of a Facebook group called “Start MCPS Schools One Hour Later”, want to know. During their summer internship with Dr. Linda Berg-Cross of Howard University, they were asked to "come up with ways to spread the news about how sleep deprivation is severely detrimental to the health", says Chattopadhyay.

Rothman and Chattopadhyay‘s petition for the cause has already garnered over a thousand signatures. Rothman believes that “MCPS can ignore two students, but it cannot ignore the signatures of thousands of students and their parents.”

Under the plan outlined in the petition, school start and end times would be shifted an hour later, so that other than a shift in all bus schedules, nothing should change. With the one hour shift, Rothman says, “Students won’t just go to sleep later; they really will sleep for an extra hour. And one hour does make an importance difference.”

With today’s rigorous academic environment, few teenagers get enough sleep. With calendars full of due dates and extracurricular activities, teens often sacrifice sleep time in order to accommodate their schedules. Teenagers should get nine hours of sleep each night, but nowadays, this usually only happens during the weekends.

A study of Kentucky schools showed that a one-hour shift of high school start times from 7:30 AM to 8:30 AM reduced automobile crashes among 16-18 year olds by 16%. In addition, the National Sleep Foundation reports that extra sleep has been proven to improve academic performance, decrease tardiness, lower teenage car accident rates, and reduce obesity and depression among students.

If there seems to be so many benefits to such a plan, why has it not happened yet? The biggest conflict, says Chattopadhyay, is that "starting school an hour later means a change in bus and building schedules, which means the county will have to pay over $100 million to make this happen."

Potential financial burdens are not the only issue, though. In addition, a common criticism involves the interference that the change would have with students’ athletics and their jobs. Some students simply would prefer not to get out of school later, especially if they participate in extracurricular activities that end well into the afternoon. Varsity soccer player Joseph Tong said, "6:30 PM is not an ideal time to get home. I'd rather just get home earlier."

Senior David Shou believes that a shift in school hours is worth the cost of arriving home an hour later. Shou asserts that an extra hour of sleep will help students perform at their "prime capacity," and Rothman agrees that "there is so much potential for teen-centric hours."

It is not just students who are pushing for this extra hour of sleep. After being informed of the biological benefits of starting school later, parents are supporting the idea alongside their children. Mary Sherman, parent of a junior at RM, says, "I think would be quite advantageous to a child's mental and physical health if we just let them sleep in a little longer."