This Wednesday, Dec. 3, the USD 383 Start/End Time Committee will meet with the Board of Education at Lincoln Education Center to propose new starting and ending times for next year to accommodate a three-tiered busing schedule — a new and cost-effective system where one team of bus drivers covers all grade levels.

The committee, including Manhattan High representatives counselor Dustin Duntz and Principal Michael Dorst, is suggesting school times of 7:30-2:30 for elementary schools, 8:00-3:10 for high schools, and 8:40-3:50 for middle schools and early learning. 

The Mentor Editorial Board has unanimously agreed that MHS needs later start times. Right now, high school starts at 7:40 a.m. High schoolers are not early birds. They are exhausted humans trying to fit themselves into rigid routines their bodies were never meant for. 

In fact, adolescents naturally sleep and wake later than younger children and adults. According to UCLA Health, puberty causes a shift in the body’s circadian rhythm, where sleepiness starts at 10:00 or 11:00 p.m instead of 8:00 or 9:00. Between these biological realities, busy nights filled with jobs, schoolwork, extracurriculars and other activities, and early mornings traveling to school, high schoolers are shockingly sleep deprived. 

According to USAFacts, 77% of high schoolers lack sufficient sleep. That’s more than double the proportion of younger children (35%) or adults (36%), making them the most sleep-deprived population in America. To make matters worse, Harvard Medical School links insufficient sleep to car accidents, trouble with decision-making and learning, declining mental health and mood disorders, poor immune functions — all increasingly prevalent issues among teens, who are already known for mood swings and reckless behavior. 

The evidence is clear. High school starts too early, which negatively impacts students’ mental and physical health. That is unacceptable, unhealthy and unfair, and it is truly shameful how long it’s taken for the school board to even consider changing start times– and how that decision came not because of concerns about students’ health, but because of the unrelated issue of a shortage of bus drivers. 

Unrelated, however, doesn’t mean “unimportant,” and it is also unacceptable that bus drivers are paid so little for such highly stressful jobs. Transporting droves of rude and rambunctious youth back and forth from school — especially with recent weather conditions — is not easy. The Bureau of Labor Statistics lists the average salary of US bus drivers as $21.74, while USD 383’s website lists new bus drivers’ salaries as $17.50 with marginal raises per year of driving. According to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator, the hourly living wage for a single adult with no children in Manhattan is $20.62, which only increases with more unemployed dependents or spouses. No wonder the district is hard-pressed to find new drivers! Three-tier busing is meant to save money, but if one team of drivers is working longer hours to cover elementary, middle, and high school, they should be paid accordingly. 

The current proposal makes sense. Elementary schoolers’ biological clocks are accustomed to earlier sleeping and waking times, middle schoolers and high schoolers are going through puberty, and preschoolers need more sleep. Yet the proposal only pushes back high school start times by 20 minutes — an improvement, but still not optimal. The American Psychological Association links later start times to more sleep, better grades and improved overall health in adolescents, while the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that no high school should start earlier than 8:30 a.m — a recommendation MHS students would be happy to follow, and healthier for it. 

We acknowledge that changing any established policy is a delicate balancing act, and that the Board needs to consider activity schedules, staff schedules and available resources. Still, we assert that Duntz, Dorst and the rest of the committee should make the data on sleep deprivation among high schoolers — and how later start times could strengthen student safety, success, and well-being — front and center at the school board meeting, and address the root causes of the bus driver shortage. 

If you want to advocate for later start times or better pay for drivers, head to the Board meeting and make your voice heard. And be sure to get some sleep. We aren’t all early birds, and we are not machines. We are only human, and we all need to rest. 

Uh hi, I’m Olivia. I’m the opinion editor. Hey, I’m Lane Lewisison. I am the mentor editor in chief. I’m Elizabeth Thornley, online editor in chief, Virginia Flickinger photo editor. Okay, so today we were talking about school start times, and the first question I have is ideally, so like in the best case scenario, when would you want school to start and end and why? Okay, so I’ll go first. Ideally, as, I feel like I’m a morning person, honestly. Like, I feel like I can get up and function in the morning, but I know that’s not the case for everyone. I would like it to go a little later because our bus comes at 6:30, which means I would wake up at like 5:30, which is horrible and I hate it. So start definitely a little later, maybe 820, 8 8:30 would be nice, and then end, maybe like three something. I feel like that wouldn’t be much different, but it would just give a little extra time. But also as someone who’s kind of a political policy nerd, like, I know there’s a lot of logistical challenges, even, like, changing it a little bit. So, yeah, I definitely want to look at all the options and figure out what’s best for people. But if it was just up to me, it would start a little later and a little later. So I could I could sleep and have sanity. Okay, the first thing I want to point out is among the four of us that are here, since I’m the only junior among seniors, I would be the only one affected by a change, because that change would occur for the 2025, 2026 school year. Yes. I would like to have a later start to the day. I am I really actually struggle in the mornings to get up and I am honestly pretty much late to first hour, almost every day. So I think a change would be great in high schoolers, like, don’t sleep as much as other grades. And because of that, you know, I feel like most elementary school there is probably go to bed between eight and nine while most high schoolers, and it really depends, I would guess, probably go to bed. between, like, after 10 after 10 I don’t want to give an exact range, but I would say after 10 I do agree that elementary schoolers, since they’re babies, probably need more sleep than us, but they can still get, like, nine hours of sleep with the current system that they have. And Mr. Doris has said that with an early, like a later start time, that also means there’s a later ending time. So things could be worked out with clubs or sports to have practices or rehearsals in the morning as well, which isn’t as common currently So I think there is a point to be made about like, extraracurriculars that students participate in the end of the day, ’cause there will need to be a schedule change. I know this is just one person, but. Mr. Hildebrand pointed out in a class that, you know, he is a coach at Anthony Middle School, and this current time of having not a three tiered bus system and having middle school and high school and at the same time allows him to go over to the middle school for practices and stuff after he’s done, and a change that changes start times would probably miss that kind of thing up. So those are just a couple of my first thoughts. Two. Okay. So my personal preference would be have. in start order. So like this group starts first. So I would want elementary, then middle school, then high school. And that would mess up high school after school activities, yes. But it would mean that high schoolers would get more sleep overall because we naturally were rebelliously decide to. stay up longer. We’re also really bad procrastinators, I will say. Speaking for myself to a degree.. But I think it would be interesting to move everything up a little bit, like all of it. Instead of starting at 74 or 740 start at like. 810 with the elementary and then go from there. It means later times at the end, but arguably, we can make up for that by taking days off of our breaks, which allows people to have more sleep because school has a certain amount of time you have to have legally to have a whole year, basically. Yeah. All right. I don’t really have a preference on, like, the time, but, I mean, not. Like, it doesn’t matter like, what happens to me. Like, if it’s if it’s. a later time for high schoolers, you know. Because although I will say it’ll probably mess me up as like in, because every first hour I have to drink an energy drink to stay awake. And I’m like. But also, I stress over the smallest things, like time. So if my alarm does not, like, go off at some point, I’ll probably be awake at like 6 a.m. instead of my alarm goes off at like 7. So if that changed, I would, my head would be all confused and full stressed for no reason. But then also, I mean, this’s different for people, but. I will say, I think that a majority of high school there is probably want a later time start because, I mean, yeah. I don’t think I’m I don’t. We don’t really have a sleep schedule, so it’s just whenever you fall asleep, you know? Some people have a sleep schedulehedules, but I don’t have a sleep schedule. You’re bing is a whole not interesting part of this. I don’t know if you have a question about it. I’m just mentioning it, because we should all talk about that at some point. Okay, I am not entirely sure what that means, so if you’d be willing to explain it to us at some point. Sorry. So, yeah, no, it’s okay. Other than sleep, a big driving force and changing start times is because of the shortage of bus drivers and currently middle school and high school are on the same schedule, so they need two different sets of bus teams to get kids to and from, you know, school. And that means, but I’ll say this, the same, like the teams combine to run the elementary school routes, but if we had a three tier bus system, in other words, three different start times, then one team of bus drivers would be all that would be needed, uh, basically, and it it would be. I’m pretty sure it would be fuel efficient. I have to I I should have thought about the generities of what a th’s tier system would mean, but I do know it’s been talked about that it will help with the bus driver shortage. Yeah. Okay. Um, I actually did have a question. I didn’t know about the term three tier busing in, like, specifically.. You should read my source, then. Yeah. No, I read the one about school start times. I just forgot the three tier busing part. No, but I, um. One of the questions I had wasn’t specifically about that, but it was about how do you think we could address the underlying issue, like the vacancies and the bus driver jobs? And I don’t know if we want to talk about that or if we want to talk about more of the pros and cons of school changing school start times or what do you guys want to do? Because we don’t have super long time. We could probably do both if we. Oh, Elizabeth has a.. Okay. So, generally, when it comes to getting jobs for bus drivers, they’re underpaid and they have to go through a lot. And so it’s just like our pereas at the school. We have a shortage and they go through a lot and they don’t get paid as much as teachers. And so it’s mostly just a people don’t want to go through a job that will put them through stress and then get paid very little for the efforts they just put forth to stop some kid from trying to hurt themselves. Like, that kind of scenario, you know? I’m coming up with dramatic things. But yeah, it does happen. But it’s just We don’t pay those people enough to have people going, I want to be a bus driver when I grow up. Like, no one’s going to say that because who wants to go and pick up kids that will be troublemakers, you know? Yeah. are there. But, yeah. I’ll get it back. I definitely think, like, we should increase benefits for educational staff in general, bus drivers, teachers, all of that, which would necessitate like doing things with funding because we need money and either that comes from cutting existing things that are happening or it comes from raising more revenue, which is like taxes, which is like fundraisers and stuff like that. So it’s definitely not an easy thing to fix, but I think that it’s something that we could definitely work on, and that has been a problem, not just in this specific issue, but in our community country, state, et cetera, as a whole. So, do you guys want to move on to, like, other, like, stuff about, like, what’s like, talk about activities, talk about plans and stuff. Okay. So what I was thinking is since there’s a lot of different things and since a sharp transition would be difficult. What do you guys think of, like, a phased plan? Like, we slowly switch over to this new thing. How would that? It be confusing? Yeah, that’s true. Because if we start at 720 and then the next you’re like, 730 and it’s like, what time are we supposed to start? That’s true. That would be confusing for most individuals. That’s fair.. Yeah. So logistical nightmare. What do you guys think we should do? What do you think is the best solution that satisfies as many people as possible? We don’t have all the details, that’s sure. Yeah. But, I think, or how can we have reached that kind of solution? Um, once we’ve deliberated, or once the board does, I’m certain they’ll figure out who should go first and all that. But I had a thought. I forgot it. Oh, no. I had a really good thought, and now I don’t remember. So sad. Remember. do. I want me to stall. Yes, you should stall. Stall. Stallen. Okay. So.. You should. Elementary schoolers, we like, I mean, they’re cool, like, but like we said earlier, they don’t need as much sleep as us. Have you thought of what you’re thinking? No. Well, there’s also research that shows that. teen C or, because our brains are developing and that kind of thing. Then young kids, sorry, young kids. But if you think about it, when you were younger, you were much more energized than you are now… Now I feel like I’m breaking down every day, and I’m like, oh. Me too. Where? Where’s the energy go? Where, where’ my excitement about going to school go kind of scenario. For my enjoyment for life go. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if it Basically. I wonder if it’s, like. capitalism and the grind or if it’s just like a normal part of growing up. But anyway, um Okay, uh, final thing about school start times. If you could say something to the school board in December, what would you say? I have another point. Okay. Sorry. Okay. I’m gonna have to kind of come up with this as I go. Obviously, there are more. Okay, elementary schoolers don’t drive to school. High schoolers drive to school. And in the morning, during wintertime, you could have like a frozen windshield. You know what I mean? Yeah. And a laterter start time would give us time to deal with that. And oftentimes, those kind of issues with the cold wouldn’t be as bad as when the sun starts to come up. Yeah. I believe there’s times of the year, and this just goes under, obviously with some elementary schoolers, their parents will drive to school, and that’s the same with high schoolers, but there’s more new drivers that make up the high school population than those that are bringing kids from elementary school to school. The other thing to bring up what you were saying is high schoolers do drive more than everyone else, which means if our parents were to go to work, we can get ourselves to school. Now, that might not be true for elementary middle school, because they don’t know how to drive. At least we don’t think. Video games do wonderful things. But because they don’t know how to drive and their parents have work, it could be that more people are able to drop off their kids or get bussing and supervise them until the bus comes to get them to school. And so we as high schoolers can manage ourselves. We’re more independent. We can do whatever we want. No, I’m not really. Yeah. What’s parental permission? Yeah. High schoolers generally will have more work than elementary schoolers, so a later start time might give them time to work on that. Now, I personally don’t. The ending time. Sorry. That’s a good point, no. The ending time would give them less at the end of the day. So that that argument could go either way, because I will say, I don’t feel like doing work in the morning, but it could potentially, in some situations, you might have more time before school, possibly, if a teacher is willing to work with you. I don’t know. Could. Could be. Yeah. Do you want to say anything, Virginia? Okay. Let’s let’s go back around. Sorry, I wasn’t trying to read anything. I’m really tired. Olivia Howe, Opinions, editor of The Mentor. Lane Lewis and mentor editor in chief. Elizabeth Thornly online editor in chief. Virginia Flickinginger photo editor. All right, that concludes our discussion, guys. Good job