Should the Start Time at Cony High-school Be Changed to Avoid Sleep Deprivation of its Students?

by Morgan Fichthorn

Students at Cony High School are required to be in their classrooms by 7:10 am which marks the start of the school day. How early is too early though, when the risks of this extra early start time include sleep deprivation which can in turn lower a student’s performance in school. Across the country, there have been several debates regarding how early high school start times should be. According to the CDC, “Not getting enough sleep is common among high school students and is associated with several health risks including being overweight, drinking alcohol, smoking tobacco, and using drugs, as well as poor academic performance”. Interestingly enough, Cony High School has among the earliest start times for high schools across the state of Maine. This problem has in fact been brought to the attention of other high schools in our state. Just recently, the Bath-area school board has considered moving Morse High School’s start time from 7:40 am to 8:40 am. Among the supporters of this later start time is Katie Joseph, an Assistant Superintendent for the Bath-area schools. She states, “It’s pretty astounding how positively more sleep impacts students this age”. However, more research and discussions will be held before this school district makes their decision.      

Now the big question remains, are the negative effects of sleep deprivation for our fellow Rams worth the earlier release time?  The answer is no to many including our very own Cony High School junior Penelope Fyfe. When asked about her thoughts on the 7:10 am start time at Cony, Fyfe states, "I personally think it's a little too early, especially for teenagers, because as you know we all do sports or we either have a job". This is true for many students and poses a common problem for them as their list of priorities change. Apart from working, playing a school sport, and doing homework/studying, getting enough sleep every night often falls to the bottom of their list. When asked about how much sleep she gets, Fyfe goes on to add, "I say that I maybe get 7 hours, yeah 7 at the max". This undoubtedly falls short of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine‘s recommendation for teenagers to get at least 8-10 hours of sleep every night. This would mean that the average Cony High School student would have to be asleep by 8:10 pm to achieve the perfect 10 hours of sleep each night. Unfortunately, this time is even earlier for students that ride the bus. The earliest bus pickup time for Cony High School Students is shocking at 6:14 am. Wake up time for these students is most likely around 5:30 am which is right at the crack of dawn. In order to get an adequate amount of sleep, the expectation for these students to go to bed would be between 7:30 pm and 9:30 pm each night which is completely unreasonable.    

    One solution to this problem would be to move the start time an hour later to  8:10 am. However, this would result in the release time being changed to 2:45 pm which may be unsettling to some. Mr. DeJongh, a science teacher at Cony High School, discusses the difficulties of establishing a later start time. One issue that comes with pushing the arrival time further would be coordinating the grade school bus schedules to work with the newer high school schedule. To make this work, the elementary schools in the Augusta School system would have to be pushed back an hour. Although this may seem simple, it would affect so many more students and their families then initially before. This would also mean a change in their dismissal time which may be a struggle for their parent’s work schedules. Whatever happens in the future will be up to the Cony School Board. Who knows, the difficulties in imposing a later start time may just be worth the reward of a happier and healthier student body at Cony High School. Fyfe, along with others, already has her opinion, "I say I'd be down for it…I think 8:10 (am) is a good time".