It’s six in the morning and an alarm blares like a siren. The person in bed reaches over and hits snooze, hoping the next 10 minutes will cure their sleep deprivation. When the alarm goes off again, they get up and get ready to leave their house for the day. After covering up their dark circles, they grab a granola bar on the way out the door, and eat it on the way to their daily destination, while their eyes try to stay open.

Sound familiar? Sleep deprivation is a serious problem which corrupts most of today’s society, and teenagers often suffer from it the most. According to Nationwide Children’s Hospital, teenagers need nine to nine and a half hours of sleep every night. On average, most get only seven.

According to the National Sleep Foundation, sleep deprivation can limit a person’s ability to learn, concentrate and solve problems. It causes acne, can cause a person to be more likely to turn to foods high in sugar and carbohydrates, more aggressive, and more likely to cause a car accident due to drowsy driving. In some cases, lack of sleep can have the same effect on one’s driving abilities as if they were driving with a blood alcohol content of 0.08 percent. In Ohio, driving with a blood alcohol content of 0.08 percent is illegal.

National Children’s Hospital also says that once a person hits puberty, there is a biological shift in their internal clock. This causes them to not physically be ready to go to bed until 11 p.m. This means to get nine hours of sleep, teenagers should not wake up until 8 a.m. which is after most schools have started. If schools started at 9 a.m. or later, students would be able to get close to the recommended hours of sleep, however 43 percent of public high schools start before 8 a.m. according to the Centers for Disease and Control.

Middle and elementary school students should be getting 10 hours of sleep, according to Nationwide Children’s Hospital. With an internal clock that causes them to fall asleep between 8 and 9 p.m., they should wake up around 6:30 a.m. to get the right amount of sleep.

“One big purpose physically that sleep provides is a chance for the body to repair itself physically, at the cell level, but also chemically it allows the body to ‘restock’ and get ready for the next day,” AP Psychology teacher Brian Wendle said. 

Based off of the changing internal clock of children and adolescents, it would make more sense for elementary and middle schools to start before high schools.

For the Olentangy district, a high school start time of 9 a.m. would cause school to end at 4:15 p.m. which would still give time for after school activities. It would also give teams and clubs more time to meet before school, without having to start at 6 a.m.

Games could still start between 5 and 7 p.m. and be over around 8 or 9 p.m. This would give students who are in after school activities just over two hours to finish their homework before they would need to go to bed to get the right amount of sleep.

Junior Marley W. moved to the Olentangy for the 2017-2018 school year. Previously, she lived in Illinois, where her school started at 8 a.m., except on Wednesdays when it started at 8;30 a.m. She said people seemed more awake and work “was doable because everyone was in a better mood” than they are at Olentangy.

If high school started later, elementary schools could start at 7:30 a.m., and end at 2:15 p.m. Middle school could start at 8:40 a.m. and end at 4 p.m.

“[Elementary students starting before other schools] just makes so much for since, because they get tired earlier, and don’t have as much work that keeps them up at night,” Marlee W. said.

Admittedly, this would pose some problems for parents of elementary students. With older siblings not getting home first, some elementary schoolers will need to go to daycare or Y Club (formerly known as LatchKey), which costs money for their parents.