Photo courtesy of flohealth.com

San Luis Obispo high school students will have to change their sleep schedules soon, since in the 2022-2023 school year, school will be moved back thirty minutes.

This decision, known as Senate Bill 328, prevents any middle schools from starting before 8:00 AM and does not allow high schools to start before 8:30 AM. Though this bill was placed by California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, in 2019, the school board is actually allowed to keep the school schedule as it is until July 1, 2022.

This bill was placed because many students aren’t getting enough sleep. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends eight to ten hours of sleep for teenagers, but BetterHealth shows that most teenagers actually get around six to seven hours of sleep. Regular lack of sleep can put people at risk of serious medical conditions, along with deteriorating mental health and overall exhaustion. However, some students believe that this bill will not alleviate these problems.

“As someone who takes three sports and has practice after school every single day, it limits my abilities to play club sports and the time I have to do homework, because everything is pushed back thirty minutes. In the end, I would end up going to sleep later,” said freshman Riley O’Connor.

Students are very active in clubs and sports, which is why pushing these activities back thirty minutes would simply mean the pushback of student schedules. Unless students consciously make an effort to get more sleep or break habits, they could end up going to sleep later than they usually would.

When 80 percent of teens sleep fewer than the recommended nine hours per night, it becomes clear that something needs to be done, but students disagree that simply moving everything back is the right way to get students the sleep they need.

Sources: cdc.gov Harvard.health.edu nytimes.com