Solution to the Energy Crisis

Dear Principal,

You know those kids walking to class looking like zombies? Or the perfect A+ student who’s falling asleep in class? It’s not the season or something in the air forging them into mindless twelve year old beasts crying for sleep; it’s school. the mountains of homework don't really help either. Their work is keeping them up until two in the morning then they have to get up maybe four hours later and go to school. School starts too early and essentially ends too late. After school children to go to their long practices for sports, get home, do their homework, and get a full eight hours of sleep. Right? Wrong. So you really have a choice; either lower your curriculum level greatly and give students somewhat less homework, or have school start a little later. School should definitely start later; Students are showing up sleep deprived, missing homework, and their brains don’t even begin to fully function till around ten in the morning!

As a matter of fact, getting little sleep or not valuable sleep is not okay. Many people act like their sleep is in a bank and they can save it up over the weekend then go many days on that sleep, adding in a little bit of sleep here and there. That is most certainly not the case. According to the article, “Sleep Habits: More Important Than You Think,” “ Reducing your nighttime sleep by as little as one and a half hours for just one night could result in a reduction of daytime alertness by as much as 32%.” Meaning, if you slept for one hour less than your natural, not disturbed sleep, you performance would be immensely decreased during school and activities. Not to mention it takes 2-4 hours for a teens brain to start running at the peak performance needed for school.

However, it is critical to a teens overall health to realise that sleep deprivation is something we need to fix, and quickly too. If we can start school a little later, we can stop this soon to be epidemic before it all happens. In reference to the article “Sleep Habits: More Important Than You Think,” Chronic Sleep Disorders are a result of being sleep deprived for a while. One sleep disorder resulting from sleep deprivation is sleep Apnea; if you develop this disorder you will actually stop breathing for first ten, then twenty, then thirty seconds. The cycle repeats itself multiple times throughout the night. When you wake up you will most likely have a very