To the editor:

During the school day I constantly notice kids, including myself, having trouble staying focused during the day. I often come into class and see people staring off into space or having their heads on a desk. 

These students aren't irresponsible. They are experiencing the damaging effects of sleep deprivation due to the school start time. 

I often wonder the extent to which the BHS community might be different if students gained quality sleep from a later start time. Would more people actively participate during spirit week? Would more people come to school on time? The only way to answer these questions is to find out. A later start time would help attain the goals Barrington seeks to achieve for its students as well as allow the opportunity for students to reach their full potential.

The school start time was a heated debate last year in Barrington. Although the community opted to keep 7:40 as the start time, it's plausible that this wasn't the best decision in the long run. Some people believed that it would negatively impact students' practice times and be a tough transition. What can be observed from this situation is that people are afraid of change. 

I have found that some of the same students who complained about the possibility of a new school start time last year have also complained about being tired. 

According to the National Sleep Foundation, teenagers naturally fall asleep later, and the time they wake up has been shown to have little effect on the time they go to bed. This means they are losing sleep. This is quite a concerning problem considering how many students have been lining up outside of school to sign in late in the morning.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends teenagers should sleep 8 to 10 hours a night. Yet 70 percent of students report sleeping seven hours or less on a daily basis. This alarming statistic is due to adolescents' internal clocks. Most kids aren't consciously choosing to go to bed later than necessary, teenagers are just programmed this way. 

It's unfortunate that schools are made to promote learning for a student to reach their full capability, but hinder this learning and fail to realize the degree to which they do so. In fact, "Earlier start times … increase risk of adolescent depression and anxiety," a 2017 URMC study recently found. From this it's unreasonable for parents and teachers to expect students to have any motivation to learn.

One of the true purposes of education is to actively engage and teach students in the best way possible. Instead school has become an unpurposeful chore to kids because it fails to achieve this. A later start time isn't a matter of bus schedules or money. It's a matter of integrity. Without proper sleep, one must ask, can people really claim that Barrington High School provides students a real opportunity to do their best?

Téa Bishop

Barrington