I open my eyes, rubbing them as they refuse to stay open. It feels like midnight before an important test, or a late evening spent catching up on hours of homework, but I am not in my bedroom, the lights dim and the area quiet. Students surround me, speaking, asking questions, but no one has energy, not like how it would be if any of us actually got to sleep in. No, the students around me are running on energy drinks and hype from their friends. The sun still has yet to peak into the morning sky, and I can not imagine how someone can stay awake at this hour.
In 2023, Florida governor Ron DeSantis issued a bill that, when passed, would not allow Florida high schools to start before 8:30 a.m.. In the summer of 2025, the bill was repealed because it “would present incredible challenges”. Well, they should have tried harder.
I come from a family that longs for sleep. Whether it is after a school day, a sports practice or even just waking up in the morning, all I dream of is falling asleep again. My parents are the same, and they have always pushed my sister and I to go to bed way before the rest of the kids my age, even if it means doing my homework the next morning.
Having recently graduated from middle school and found myself placed right into the battle of waking up a whole three hours earlier for high school, I long for sleep more than ever.
And I know I am not the only one.
High schoolers everywhere are deprived of the thing that makes their gears turn: sleep.
Doctors have said that all teens should get eight to 10 hours of sleep every night, but with the challenges of high school, that just is not possible. Unfortunately, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported that less than 23% of all teenagers throughout America do not get the recommended hours of sleep each night.
The struggle of having seven classes all school year is real, and it is not as if teachers are exactly known for restraining themselves when it comes to homework. Not to mention students who have any sort of extracurricular activity. All this ensures that it is impossible to go to bed at 9 p.m. and then wake up the next morning at 5 a.m. to get those minimum eight hours of sleep. It just does not work.
Getting enough sleep is not just recommended—it is completely necessary. Without it, students’ ability to focus and learn starts to malfunction, as scientists have seen a downward trend in both logical reasoning and overall mental performance.
Additionally, students’ emotions are incredibly affected by sleep deprivation. Without enough sleep, they are more prone to nervousness, worry and frustration, all of which can lead to a spiral of negative emotions and clouded judgment. This makes it very difficult to get through any sort of clubs, classes and other activities.
Sleep deprivation is a spiral of nothing more than doom.
However, DeSantis’s bill got repealed for a reason. Though there are many issues, transportation is the biggest. Right now, there is a perfect gap between elementary, middle and high school release and start times. This allows the small number of buses and bus drivers to stick to cleverly woven routes and keep with their wages. With the new bill, more bus drivers would be needed, which would impact current bus drivers’ wages.
However, there are still ways around that. The district could divide the routes more evenly to make sure every kid has a bus and a driver. They could spare a little more from their budget for transportation. They could do a bigger outreach to find more drivers. There are so many ways that this issue could be solved, at least in the short term before a more stable solution comes to mind.
In a perfect world, high school would start when middle school does, at 9:30 a.m., and middle and elementary would be moved down. This allows elementary schoolers, who generally wake up earlier than teenagers, to go to school before the crack of dawn, also allowing parents who work early in the morning to drop them off before they go to work. This would have the added benefit of not requiring parents to spend as much money on childcare and supervision.
If they got out at 4:05 p.m., like middle schools do now, high schoolers would still be able to participate in their after school activities, and complete the piles of homework everyone gets.
Is it a flawless plan? No. But if high schoolers can finally go to school without feeling so sleep-deprived, passing the bill would be completely worth it.
Sleep is truly essential, and should be treated as such. No teenager should be sleep-deprived every moment of their life, especially since these four years prepare them for their future after graduation. How can you expect students to reach for their life dreams when they can barely think and focus?
So talk to your parents. Talk to the district. Go to this link to find SCPS’s school board contact information. Email the members, so that your voice can be heard. So that they finally listen to us.
And who knows? With everyone’s support, the Florida High School Start Time Bill might still be passed.
