IIRC, parents--particularly parents with younger kids. The highschoolers need (in their view) to be home earlier than the middle- and elementary schoolers to be the responsible party so the parents can come home at the end of the workday.

The problem is deeply structural.

Sports are another big reason parents want older kids to get to school earlier than younger kids (as they can't take everyone at once, or else you need way more busses)—longer daylight hours after school for practice. Any attempt to change the schedule to get older kids to school later and younger ones earlier, will run into strong resistance from Sports Parents™, no matter the benefits to health or academics.

("why don't they just have the sports teams do one short practice in the morning, and one short practice in the afternoon?" 1. some of them actually do that already, despite the crazy-early school start time, and 2. for the less-insanely-dedicated sports that can't rely on parents to drop all the team members off before school, you'd need to run extra busses just for the sports kids, if they're showing up earlier than everyone else, and 3. Depending on the sport, one long practice is better and/or a lot more convenient than two short ones)

>"why don't they just have the sports teams do one short practice in the morning, and one short practice in the afternoon?"

Another reason is that most older kids don't want to be covered in sweat for their entire high school career and having kids communally shower at school is seemingly something that is rightfully being phased out.

> having kids communally shower at school is seemingly something that is rightfully being phased out.

For a sports team, that seems silly.

Most sports have enough weird contact that the showers are probably the least of the problems.

Now, if you want to argue that sports, in general, and school should be separate, I'm all ears.

Interestingly enough, it was the exact opposite when I was in high school. Elementary got out at about 2:45, middle around 3:15, and HS at 4:20. I was very appreciative of our 9:05 start time.

This has never been the case anywhere I've gone to school - outside of special classes, every school got out at the same time.

That said, there'd be nothing to prevent a school district from adjusting both school times if local parents demanded this be accommodated.

Some school districts are K-8 or 9-12 only, which I've experienced myself. Taking California as an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_districts_in_Ca...

> In California there are 560 Elementary districts, 87 High School districts, 330 Unified districts.

(I do think that this isn't a great argument against switching to DST permanently. I think if this was legislated then the school districts would just adapt now, especially since a significant chunk of students are still doing remote learning.)

Where do highschoolers end school sooner then elementary?

All over the place. When I was in school, the same buses that serviced the high schools also serviced the elementary schools. So the high school students would get picked up, and then the elementary kids would be next after that.

Highschoolers here all use public transport. They have more classes then small kids.

Small kids have few classes and before/after optional program that basically do childcare for parents. They are free to go much sooner. Many of them come in and out by public transport too.

Suburban Chicago, at least 15 years ago. I'd get home ~30 minutes before my siblings and I'd keep an eye on them until my mom came home.

It's a great idea, and would work fine for younger kids. High school kids with after-school jobs and sports might find a conflict, though.

I'm in the camp of "seriously, fuck high school sports" because entire districts bend their will and finances to support football programs (other sports? what other sports?) to the detriment of everyone else in the school.

But that POV is spitting into the wind. And god help you if you're in a smaller area where high school sports are the entire social center of the community.

If elementary schools changed schedules by an hour, some parents of elementary school kids would need to change their schedule by an hour as well. When the whole society does this all at once, the individual parents/coworkers/bosses don’t have to negotiate or coordinate anything; it “just happens”.

If we switch to permanent DST, and the whole of society compensates by setting schedules back an hour, all we’ve done is create de-facto permanent standard time. That’s the best-case scenario.

I have a better idea. Let’s just actually switch to permanent standard time, so we don’t have to hope that society shakes itself out.

I highly doubt that would actually happen, though. During the last year, we've encouraged folks to work at home and schools have been closed. Yet those folks that work retail or healthcare or factories still had to go to work like normal. Considering how much of the population that covers, I highly doubt folks would be changing their schedules.

After all, if one group of folks can figure out how to work around the change, there is no reason for everyone else to need changes.

Exactly. We, the people, need to exert back pressure on a deeply flawed system to force it to happen. Such a change wouldn't be nearly as problematic if union membership, for example, was widespread.

How does union membership help align a work team that needs two members for a team job (for task-related or safety-related reasons) and exactly one of the two needs to change schedules because their kid's school changed schedule by an hour?

A lot of elementary schools have before and after school programs so it'll be a mixed bag.

> We don’t need the whole country to set its clock around students.

Don't we, though? Parents have jobs, jobs have schedules, and those schedules need to be coordinated with school drop-off and pickup times.

And if it's functionally impossible for the overwhelming majority of employed adults who are parents to meet those schedules due to school times being shifted... businesses will either adapt their schedules to meet the new reality or they'll fire 75%+ of their staff.

I know which one I'd bet on.

Schools also have to take bus schedules into account. A district with elementary / middle / and high school will have 3 separate bus schedules if there's enough population.

My 8 year old nephews' school day doesn't begin until 9:40, but it ends after 5pm and allows very little sunlight for play time in the evenings. I know that when I was that age, I was far more concerned about being able to go out and play than whether the sun was up when I got up.

I wouldn't be surprised if part of what drives school start times to be earlier is the prevalence of dual income households, where both parents need to get to work, and (particularly with younger children) children need to be cared for.

This brings to mind my own memories of childhood; I have a sense leftover from that that afternoon daycare is relatively common, but early morning daycare perhaps less so?