This tends to be how suburban elementary schools are, but high schools require more resources per school (for all the facilities for sports and enrichment programs), so there are fewer, larger high schools.
Having one high school serve only a 1-2 mile area would only work out if you have a bunch of 100-story condos in the 1-2 mile area. Otherwise, where are all these kids even coming from?
I grew up in a town of 50,000 people. The population density of it, according to Wikipedia, is 1,082/sq mi. The town has three high schools to serve its population, and they're all just about full. If it had more schools, though, then each school would have less than 200 students apiee. Where would the budget for these schools' facilities come from?
We were unambiguously a suburb. 1/6th that density would have been nightmarish sprawl. Berkeley, also mostly suburban, is 12,000 per square mile! That’s my point.
i mean, according to the general sentiment of HN at least, there is something horrifically wrong with urban planning in the US. in the meantime, the schools need to settle on a "least terrible" schedule.
Ok, agreed. Now what?
But seriously, this is the state of affairs for much of the country.
Remote school. Lot of things could be learned and done from home. Then you can stagger your buses from 11am to noon for those who require communal food then group activities (art, sports etc.).
tbh, i doubt the time that students are required to be at school has much to do with their ideal sleep schedules. only about a third of women are stay at home moms these days, so you can consider parents to fall into one of two groups: shift workers and 9-5 office workers. shifts can start/end at any time so they can't really be planned around at the level of an entire school system. so by default, the schedule gets planned with the assumption of both parents working 9-5s. if both parents have to be at work by 9:00, the kids need to be at school by 8:00, so the parents can drop them off or at least make sure they get on the bus.
also, a lot of school districts only have enough buses to transport all the lower, middle, or high school students at once, so their arrivals must be staggered.
given that school also serves the purpose of gov't sponsored day care, i'm not sure what they could really do better aside from granting tardiness allowances for students with bona-fide sleeping disorders.