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California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am

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Re: California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am

#41

Post by com2kid »

widforss wrote: post #30
rz2k wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the shortest days of the year in Los Angeles[1], there is civil twilight around 6:30am and full daylight before 7am. Maybe the writers, who even have children, live close to the schools they attend. [1] https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/los-angeles

Wow, this really gives you perspective. My corresponding times are 8:21 and 9:55. I would give the world for the opportunity of sunlight evenly distributed over the year.

I do kind of enjoy the over 15 hours a day of sunlight Seattle gets in the summer, it peaks at around 16hrs on the longest day! I can get off work at 6, be home at 7, and still have 2 hours of sunlight left!

Less than 9 hours in the winter though... that part is harsh.

Re: California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am

#42

Post by cylentwolf »

newnewpdro wrote: post #38

I used to get up well before the sun rose for private school, it wasn't a big deal, we just went to bed earlier than most. It was nice to have more time to myself before parents got home from work. It seems strange for the state to be meddling in this.

A bunch of studies came out saying that students are better with more sleep and generally waking up after 7 is best so we get this law. The problem here is that I am betting that the kids still get home before their parents from work and now they will have to start after their parents leave for work so it will put an economic crunch on dual working parents.

Re: California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am

#43

Post by topkai22 »

secabeen wrote: post #8
ijpoijpoihpiuoh wrote: post #7

I wonder how the policy discussions looked when considering the impact on poor parents who have to be at work. Maybe the thinking was that the start time of 7:30-8AM was already too late to save these folks, so 8:30AM would not make them much worse off? Or maybe there are fewer people in these circumstances than I fear?

This law is only for grades 7-12, so most affected kids can get themselves to school, or don't need direct supervision between when parents leave for work and when the bus arrives.

I'd also point out I've never lived in a school district that started elementary school before 8a, so these parents must have had solutions for those years. The real problem is going to be if elementary schools get pushed forward to start at 7a and release at 1p or something crazy like that, but I know most districts don't want the liability of 8 year olds waiting for the bus in the dark along side a major road.

Re: California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am

#44

Post by thrower123 »

grawprog wrote: post #40
awillen wrote: post #2

I didn't even realize schools started before 8... I believe that's when my high school started. Thinking back to the useless slug that I was in the mornings as a teenager, I can't imagine this will do anything but help learning. If only there had been a law saying college classes couldn't start before 11am (or 2pm on Fridays) when I was there...

I used to have both a technical math and a statistics class that started at 7am in college. Fridays if i remember right for the math class. That was always a 'fun' way to start the day.

Foreign language drill classes at 7 AM was quite possibly the worst thing I dealt with during college. Rapid-fire German when it is dark and frozen and you are hung over is very rough.

Re: California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am

#45

Post by ghaff »

widforss wrote: post #30
rz2k wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the shortest days of the year in Los Angeles[1], there is civil twilight around 6:30am and full daylight before 7am. Maybe the writers, who even have children, live close to the schools they attend. [1] https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/los-angeles

Wow, this really gives you perspective. My corresponding times are 8:21 and 9:55. I would give the world for the opportunity of sunlight evenly distributed over the year.

The thing with evenly distributed sunlight is that, if you work in an office, you're not going to have a lot of free time to be outside and not commuting while the sun is out during the week.

With a big skew between winter and summer hours, it's dark in the winter but you don't actually lose that much in-the-sun free time while you gain a huge amount of light during the long summer evenings.

Re: California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am

#46

Post by Gibbon1 »

JimboOmega wrote: post #35
rz2k wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the shortest days of the year in Los Angeles[1], there is civil twilight around 6:30am and full daylight before 7am. Maybe the writers, who even have children, live close to the schools they attend. [1] https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/los-angeles

Los Angeles is far south, even in the context of California; that's not true for San Francisco. Also the shortest day of the year isn't the day of the latest sunrise - that'd be the day before daylight savings time ends. On that day in San Francisco civil Twilight is at 7:08 and full daylight isn't until 7:35. If we put aside daylight savings shenanigans, it's still not the same day (because of how the earth's orbit…

> I definitely shared the experience (growing up in the mid Atlantic) of catching buses before true sunrise so I could get to a 7:40 AM start in the winter months. I

That reminds me I have a vague memory that there was a lot of pissing when Nixon Admin moved up daylights savings time during the first oil crisis. Parents were complaining that their kids were having to walk to school in the dark. Back then city and suburban kids didn't get rides to school, they all walked.

Re: California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am

#47

Post by thrower123 »

DenisM wrote: post #32

The "early wakeup time makes people groggy" story always looked puzzling to me. I mean, when DST kicks in everyone adjusts in day or two. What prevents one from setting up their own personal DST and getting up earlier still? Certainly not biology.

DST is a huge mess for at least a month, sometimes longer. It's massively disruptive. This may be more of an issue in higher latitudes, though.

It was always the last straw that signalled the effective end of the school year in the spring. Everyone was so frigged up and groggy from that shift ahead that we might as well have not been there, and by the time people did adjust, there wasn't any time left to recoup.

Re: California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am

#48

Post by Hermitian909 »

meristem wrote: post #34

Unfortunately, the school systems still rely on one parent at home. It is not just drop off and pick up times: school activities, parent-teacher conferences, etc. For example, in the SF Unified District, school tours for parents of kids entering kindergarten, middle school and high school are during the school hours, mostly in the morning. It is all built around the expectation of a parent at home or a job structure…

I can tell you that, through most of the bay area at least, those policies are mostly about intentional socioeconomic segregation.

My family has deep ties to local education infrastructure and its well known that most of the advocates for these policies are trying to keep poor kids out of their schools. While they don't say it in public forums they're generally more than happy to tell you in private.

Re: California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am

#49

Post by ACow_Adonis »

socalnate1 wrote: post #3

My high school started at 7am. I also took the bus; which picked up around 6:15am; so I usually woke up around 5:45am during the week. I would often nod off during my first or second period; and routinely took 2-3 hour naps when I got home from school; which screwed up my ability to fall asleep early at night or get much homework done. I sometimes wonder what my academics would have been like if I was actually awake…

As someone who lives in a country where schools all uniformly started at 9:00 am (i'm probably wrong on that, but lets just go with it), what's the social-background/theoretical reason for starting the school day at 7:00am?

From the outside that just seems absolutely bonkers?

Re: California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am

#50

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

jumpingmice wrote: post #19
socalnate1 wrote: post #3

My high school started at 7am. I also took the bus; which picked up around 6:15am; so I usually woke up around 5:45am during the week. I would often nod off during my first or second period; and routinely took 2-3 hour naps when I got home from school; which screwed up my ability to fall asleep early at night or get much homework done. I sometimes wonder what my academics would have been like if I was actually awake…

I don’t get how this is supposed to work with sports and other activities. In high school I had water polo/swimming practice mornings at 6:15. Is that now illegal?

Since it doesn't apply to "zero-period" classes, it probably doesn't apply to sports practices either.
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