Saturday, April 20, 2024 | St. Lawrence County, NY
To the Editor: As a community health student at SUNY Potsdam I don’t believe that changing the start time for Potsdam’s Central schools would be beneficial for the community. This time change …
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To the Editor:
As a community health student at SUNY Potsdam I don’t believe that changing the start time for Potsdam’s Central schools would be beneficial for the community.
This time change could cause problems for both parents and students within the community. The current start time for school is 7:30 a.m. If it gets pushed back until 8:30 a.m. this could cause problems for parents who have young children and leave for work early in the morning. If the time changes parents may have to find a baby sitter for their children in the morning, and this would cause them to have to spend money that they may not have, which could cause financial problems.
As for older students, they may be more apt to skip school because their parents may not be home when it is time for school.
Also this could cause a problem for sports teams. If school starts later practices will have to start later as well. Having kids be physically active is just as important as them getting quality sleep. This could cause conflict for the sports teams because the practices could end up going until 10 p.m., which would entail kids to stay up later than they normally would.
Also if school starts later kids will stay up later at night because they won’t have to go to school as early. Most real world jobs start before 8:30 a.m. anyways, so if students get used to not having to wake up in the early hours of the morning for school how does one expect them to get up early to go to work?
Kids can get enough sleep if they just go to bed at a reasonable time. As a student who has completed primary school which started at 7:30 a.m., I never had a problem waking up in the morning and completing a full day of school.
It has helped me in the long run because every job that I have worked I would have to be there by 7 a.m., and that was no problem for me because I was so used to it.
Overall I think changing the start time for the central schools in Potsdam would cause more problems for everyone in the community rather than benefits.
Alex Armstrong
SUNY Potsdam
