Later high school start times align with teens’ sleep needs

I’m glad to see that high school start times are finally being aligned with the known sleep patterns of teenagers (“Study: Delaying high school start times good for parents, too”).

Frequently getting to school late in 1983 when I was in ninth grade at Guilderland High School began my adversarial relationship with school authorities. I was repeatedly punished with detention for tardiness, despite the fact that I was an A- student at the time. Slacking was tolerated by administrators when it came to schoolwork but not punctuality, which seemed an odd policy in what was nominally a school and not a boot camp.

The fact that Guilderland wound up spending presumably vast sums of money on my education in residential schools and that I eventually dropped out of high school cannot be laid at the feet of the start time, but they cannot be regarded as consequences of any other single factor in my life, either.

It is the cumulative stress on a student that leads to what are listed as adverse outcomes, as it is with adults, too.

I wound up having a much better life as a teen than I probably would have had in Guilderland. After dropping out of high school, I enjoyed higher education and teaching before finally getting my PH.D. from SUNY Albany in 2020.

I’m just pointing out that reasonable start times may save taxpayer money as well as parental sleep.

James Lyons Walsh

Albany