High school is known for sleep deprived teenagers who work late hours to finish an extremely procrastinated essay, yet wake up at the crack of dawn to make it to the 7:20 a.m. bell. By the time most high school students get to school, they are already feeling drowsy, even with a cup of coffee in their hands. This is why Fairfax County is considering pushing back start times for high school students in 2015-2016, possibly all the way to 8 a.m. The National Sleep Foundation says that teens need 9 ¼ hours of sleep every night to do their best work, however, only 8 percent of students in America get that much sleep. One Fairfax County school board member, Sandy Evans, says that sleep deprivation contributes to poor academic performance, obesity and depression.

Arlington and Loudon County schools have already successfully created later start times, so Fairfax County should be able to also. One of the School Board members for Fairfax County, Ryan McElveen, posted a picture of the possible start time option via Twitter. Option #3, which states that middle school and high school times get flipped, while elementary school times stay the same. This means that high schools could start from 8:00-8:10 and end from 2:40-2:50. The approximate cost for this switch would be around $5,000,000, and 46 buses would need to be added to the school system.

This may seem delightful to many students, but there are also some downsides. If schools end this late, then after-school activities will start later than usual, as well. That means they will end late, which doesn’t really help the fact of students getting more sleep. If they arrive home an hour later than usual, then homework will get done an hour later as well, which means less sleep anyways. In addition to these disadvantages, there is another problem with the start times. 8 a.m. is known for the exceeding amounts of traffic, so students may have to wake up early just to sit in traffic and make it in time for the morning bell. However, for the most part, many students and parents see this start time shift as a good thing. Overall, most students will get more sleep, and hopefully they will be able to crush the stereotype about high school students not getting enough sleep at night.