From the article linked in the article:

https://www.ohio.com/akron/news/education/i-promise-school-a...

>I Promise kids’ school days will start an hour later than their peers. They’ll also receive an additional hour after school every day called the “illumination period,” which will be a time for extra mentoring, studying or club activities.

Not only does the school day start an hour later, the extra time in the day comes from support of extracurricular activities.

I don’t imagine most working adults would be willing to work starting so early. Why do we force children who need even more sleep to do so?

So that the adults can get to work on time.

Mostly this ^. As a parent you want to get to work on time. So staggering when school starts is both good for traffic and parents’ sanity.

>Mostly this ^. As a parent you want to get to work on time. So staggering when school starts is both good for traffic and parents’ sanity.

Part of it is the assumption that kids can't get to school on their own. I was walking by myself to school when I was 6.

And in a lot of places the built environment is such that kids really can't get to school on their own. Schools are either far away, public transit isn't possible, or there just aren't sidewalks, crosswalks, or safe routes to walk.

Fortunately the densely built areas don't have most of those problems. As long as the neighborhood kids travel in groups they're fine. And the "I Promise" program gives them their own bicycles and free rides to and from school within 2 miles.

I walked to school as I was growing up in Nairobi but realize that it’s not possible for my daughter.

Nairobi would probably have questionable security compared to the US, but I’m guessing we are probably judged quite harsh here in US.

There was just this article other day where a woman faced jail time or massive fines because she left her “not-so-baby” baby in the car. My dad used to leave us in the car all the time with windows open.

I can’t do any of that. Mostly because I may end up in jail. That’s the reality of US.

So why don't we have kids start school at 9, adults start work at 10, kids get out of school at 5 instead of 3, adults get out of work at 6 instead of 5, problem solved???

More proof of how far down the list of priorities Americans place education.

School starts are staggered so the district can use fewer buses (at least they are around here). Middle school at 7:55, High school at 8:35, Elementary at 9:20.

Here it's the opposite. Elementary starts earlier than middle school. I actually prefer this because our middle school age kid is fine to get out to the bus on her own. The elementary school twins not as much. I can leave for my train earlier this way.

Follow the money. In this case, the money is in the bus system. You only need one set of buses and drivers if you stagger school starts. Overlapping school starts means overlapping demand for buses.

The high school I went to looked into shifting the start time later because of research like this. Unfortunately, they concluded that it wasn't feasible because of after school sports -- our teams play against other high schools in the area, and the timing of that is based on when all the schools start. So if one school wants to start later, its students wouldn't be done in time for sports games and such. Pretty lame.

I'm glad your school is prioritizing what's really important.

"The day they cut the football budget in this state, that will be the end of Western Civilization as we know it!"

-- Mr Holland's Opus