School Time Change Hurts Parents

Fifty minutes is a long time and a lot can be accomplished during it. In 50 minutes you could run five miles, read 100 pages, or study for a history test. This year FCPS high schools all announced that they would start 50 minutes later than the previous year. This decision was made in order to allow high school students to sleep more and stress less. For a lot of students this has been a positive change and has allowed them to come to school better rested. When FCPS made this decision, they completely forgot the effect this would have on parents.
This year traffic is much worse than last year because of the time change. For parents who drive their children to school this creates a huge issue. “The new start time is very problematic and increases the drive to school by a full fifteen minutes for us because of the traffic,” said Adam Tankel. These 15 minutes are a large amount of time for parents to take out of their day and spend in the car. Also the increased amount of traffic leads to students waking up earlier in order to get to school on time. The whole point of the start time change is to allow students to wake up later and now they have to lose valuable sleep to even arrive at school on time.
School starting earlier also means that it ends later and this negatively affects the parents as well. Many students stay after school to do sports and other extracurricular activities. Now that school ends later these activities end times is pushed back. For students who have younger siblings whose bus arrives at their house right at the time extra-curricular activities end this creates a big issue. “The after school timing is horrible. It is very tough to be able to pick up my son at Oakton and be home for my youngest when he comes home from Elementary School,” Tankel said. Most households have only one parent home at this time. This parent cannot be in two places at once and will either have to be very late picking up their child or leave a young kid at home.

School starting later may have been a good idea on paper, but is simply too inconvenient for parents. Because of the later start time the traffic is greatly increased and school starts and ends at a much less convenient time. Also parents have to adjust their schedules in response to the new start time. Students getting under an hour of extra sleep is not worth the inconvenience it brings with it.