In today’s day and age, it’s absolutely ludicrous that schools begin before most working days do. Often, you hear about the nine to five workday, since that’s all it really is. You get up, get ready, drive, and arrive to work at nine o'clock. You do your work, then you leave, usually at 5pm. And that’s it. Your work is done for the day, and now your time is to yourself. This leaves ample time for one to get the CDC recommended amount of sleep - eight and a half to nine and a half hours. Keep in mind, all of this is for a fully developed adult. They’re not growing, or learning, or competing in a physical way (with a regular nine to five job). Now consider the majority of teenagers in the US. Two thirds in fact. Two thirds of High School teens suffer from sleep deprivation, according to the CDC. This is because these teenagers are hopelessly overworked, overstressed, and over-expected of by the school system. If teenagers had to wake up early, say six thirty AM, to arrive at school at 8:00, then be completely done at 3:00 - no homework, no after-school activities… that would be reasonable. One could expect a teenager with that schedule to get a reasonable, recommended amount of sleep, and still maintain a competent social and academic life. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case at all. In ⅚ high schools in the US, they day starts before 8:30AM, the CDC recommended start time. On its own, this would probably be ok, but bundled with the after-school requirements and commitments like community service, sports, or even a job, and the average two and a half hours of homework a night, the average teenager can’t be expected to get the amount of sleep that’s necessary to show up the next day and learn in a coherent way. Sleep deprivation can have grave symptoms, including but not limited to, a lack of motivation, depressive or suicidal thoughts, poor performance in academics, a far heightened risk to indulge in addictive behaviours, like drugs or alcohol, and a heightened risk of obesity. This scenario is even more extreme at Harker. Ever since the new block schedule got put into place, have you ever had a teacher assign you twice the amount of homework, since you have “twice the time” to complete it? And imagine if you were to miss a day, or god forbid even two or more days of school. Catching up would be a monstrous task, accompanied only by heightened stress and anxiety. If the Center of Disease Control, because let’s not forget, that’s what sleep anxiety is, a disease, is telling us to start at least at 8:30am, why is one of the most “progressive” schools in the country not changing their policy? If we’re innovative enough to change the order in which we do Physics and Biology, I would have thought that we’d be smart enough to start the day thirty minutes later. Thank you.