Sleep is vital for all human beings, especially adolescents. Not getting enough sleep every night can have serious consequences: increase in depressed moods, anxiety, suicide, weight gain, increase in motor accidents and athletic injuries, decrease in concentration, poor performance in school and more. When teens are busy juggling academics, extracurricular activities, work, etc. how are they supposed to get the eight to ten hours of sleep they need to properly function every day when their first class of the day starts at 7:15 AM? When a survey was sent out to students at Pennridge High School, out of the 100 respondents, 73% of them said they were not getting enough sleep at night. 

Due to the lack of sleep students get each night, this has raised the question of if school is starting too early. Pennridge High School is the only school in the area that is investigating and researching this question. So, what is it that Pennridge High School is doing to learn as much as they can about this topic? Pennridge’s Adolescent Sleep and School Start Time Study Board, consisting of not only staff but also students, administrators, and district parents, attend the Regional Adolescent Sleep Needs Coalition (RASNC) meetings to hear about other districts and their start times to further their research and knowledge. During these meetings, they discussed the effects of sleep deprivation, district transportation changes, impacts on after-school activities, and more. Along with attending the RASNC meetings, Pennridge is holding its own meetings as well. “At the start of this school year, I began to meet with Mr. Schoonover, Dr. Rybarczyk, and other student representatives to discuss the importance of pushing back the school start time and the various positive and negative effects,” said student representative of the class of 2021, Sarah Kircher. The school is making sure that they look at different perspectives to gain as much of an understanding as they possibly can in order to make a proper proposal to the school board. Another member on the committee, Mrs. Gordienko, put her input as well as a teacher who teaches first period about what she sees. She notices a difference in the student’s personalities when they come into school that early, she notices that it’s much harder to motivate students in the morning and living 25 minutes away from the school, she recognizes her own exhaustion. 

So, will the board approve this proposal or not? “I think so. Dr. Rybarczyk is working very hard to get this approved soon,” Mrs. Gordienko told us. Unfortunately, with the Coronavirus, the proposal was pushed back, but they are prepared to deliver it to the school board in the fall of this year. If the proposal is successful, it will be put in effect fall of 2022-2023. Hopefully with all of the work and research that the committee has put into this study, they will be able to push start times back to help students and teachers be more successful in their academic and teaching careers. Allowing students to get more sleep will essentially benefit everyone involved.