Many students all around the world complain, almost daily, about being too tired at school. Start times for schools vary all around the world. At Wahlert, classes start at 7:40 a.m. and end at 2:45 p.m.  

While this start time seems to frustrate many students, there are also some early birds that would just rather get the school day over with.

Belle Pole, ‘20, thinks the time Wahlert starts school should not change. She thinks that school start time should stay the time it is because she gets out of school earlier. “If we were to start school an hour later, sports would have to be pushed back and some people wouldn’t end up getting home until around 7 p.m., which pushes everything we have to get done back, eventually causing everybody to get the same amount of sleep,” Pole explains.

She also thinks that we should get the hour late start on Friday that the public schools get. “I feel like it would give us a nice recoup day,” Pole adds.

Pole might be one of the few people that likes the start time as it is.

Audra McMahon, ‘18, thinks just an hour later start would be beneficial to students. “Personally, I’m always tired, even when getting eight to nine hours of sleep,” McMahon says. She has a similar thought as Pole and thinks that a solution could be having the late start a few days a week.

Casey Cronin, ‘19, says school should start an hour later so that people could sleep in more. “I think an hour longer of sleep would help people be more focused in class; they wouldn’t be so tired, and they wouldn’t be falling asleep in classes so often,” Cronin says.

Henry Tomecek, ‘21, thinks he would benefit from an extra 15 to 30 minutes of sleep. “I usually just get up and go to school. It could start at either 8 a.m. or 8:15 a.m.,” he says. Tomecek thinks that each class is just too long, and that’s why students are falling asleep. “Maybe if each class wasn’t an hour and a half, we would be able to focus on what we’re learning about better,” he says.

While there are many reasons that Wahlert starts school at the time it does, including bus scheduling with elementary schools, more time for activities and parent scheduling, most students think an extra half hour to sleep wouldn’t harm anyone.