No classes before 8:30 a.m. at California HS: Jeff Spicoli approves

I've covered several schools that had to pull kids out early to accommodate sports. They made it work. It is just a round of coordinating with teachers.

 

Not only is this relative, but it also depends on how the day is structured and when the day ends.

Overseas, school started at 0705 ... but we were done by 1330.

Not a fan of getting up early these days - work has much to do with it - but, relatively speaking, to be done by 1330 made starting shortly after 0700 well worth it. Not to mention that in Southeast Asia, starting earlier means not having to deal with as much daytime heat and humidity during scheduled brownouts on base.

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At my high school stateside, I did feel a little bad for the athletes. The school was in a conference where three of the schools were about a two-hour bus ride, with another school about 90 minutes out and still another an hour away (betting maumann and frantic scribe would get the specifics ... ). On that front, it could be a little messy. Wasn't that remote a school, but with a lack of similar-sized schools - not to mention that trio of schools two hours away not having any other dance partners, that was the landscape.

 

Most Southern California districts are starting in early August, the 7th or so. School runs til late May with week-long breaks for Thanksgiving and Presidents Week. Many also take three weeks at Christmas and/or two at Easter.

 

I don't recall ever starting class before 8:30 in high school. Homeroom was at 8:45 when I was in middle school. And we got out of class at roughly 3:30 in both places.

By the time I started working where I was, the high-school day was about 8:15 to 3:30. By the time I left, it was 7:55 to 3:05.

 

When I was in high school, we were in a similar league, no school more than 45 minutes away. I was on the swim team, so we had double workouts: Weight room and a short time in the pool before school, another in-pool workout after school. I was probably in bed by 9 most nights to make morning workout around 6.

First high school I covered was in a league where a couple of schools were within 20 minutes, the others maybe 45. Same with my most recent full-time gig. But the adventure was in Arizona, when I did sports only a couple of days a week. At the time, Lake Havasu High was in a league with the rest of the membership in the Phoenix area, about a three-hour bus ride. I was taking a baseball game on the phone one time and the softball coach was giving me their game on voicemail. And worse, that area along I-10 was not a good cell zone, so I ended up listening to the voicemail about 10 times to get a story.

 

I used to think all this whining about adolescents and mornings was just a sign of people being candyasses, as I've always been a morning person and never had a problem with it in high school. But now I've got a 14-year-old who physically cannot get to sleep before 11 and is a wreck after getting up at 7:15 all week, and I see the point of it. My son simply doesn't sleep enough and has had a minor cold for two months because of it.

It does create problems for after school activities to let HS kids start later; I know some schools have practices for some sports before school.

 

This is what I was talking about. It's not just laziness or bad decisions by teenagers. They really do have difficulty getting to bed that early.

 

There is a lot of sentiment out there that year-round school would be better than what we have now. Those months off do often have a negative effect on student learning.

Year-round school doesn't mean more actual days of instruction. It would expand sort of what MTM described, with more breaks and longer breaks within the school year. If I remember correctly, the entire idea of summer vacation comes out of a time when we were a more agrarian society. The primary reason the switch doesn't happen is expense. Teacher contracts in many places are 10 months instead of 12. If you extend them to 12, you're going to have unions pushing for higher pay. A relatively high percentage of teachers have some sort of summer job or they have paid professional development time. This allows for major changes, like the creation of new courses. Maintenance of the buildings would also be more expensive. Buildings are either shut down or used for other programs in the summer. There are other complications in the way, many of which simply fall under the heading of people not liking change.

 

The only reason why schools are starting in early August is to cater to AP exams, which is another test preying on people anxious about getting their kid into the best college.

 

As someone who did well on an AP English exam many years ago, those extra college credits were a good thing in many ways, so I wouldn't completely dismiss AP classes.