Comment by dTal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dTal | Hacker News Reader

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My high school started at 7:40 AM and I never understood why. I've never forgiven them for (among a laundry list of similar evils) the effect 4 years of chronic sleep deprivation must have had on my developing brain. My alarm was set for 6 AM so I could catch a 7 AM school bus (I only lived about 15 minutes away, but the bus was slow, took a painful route, and arrived 10 minutes early). I had to place my alarm so that I'd have to get up and walk across the room to turn it off, or I'd never have woken up. It was generally pitch black at 6AM, so this eventually resulted in me slicing my finger wide open on the edge of a mirror as I reached clumsily and half-asleep for my alarm. I still have the scar.

I'd like to be able to say that it gives me closure to finally have an explanation, but honestly it just makes me madder that football was responsible.

My (very non-affluent) school started at 7:20, and the stated reasoning was to maximize the earnings opportunity for those students who had after-school jobs.

I thought part of it was so they could use the same fleet of buses for HS/JHS/Primary.

That is a good reason to stagger school starting times. It doesn't explain the need to make HS and JHS start so early, or why on earth they would start earlier than primary school when young children tend to wake up earlier than teenagers anyway.

7:30 for primary/elementary school and 8:30 for HS and JHS would have been great (or maybe even 8 and 9 respectively), but I suppose some kids skipping class after their parents had left for work would ruin it for everyone.

EDIT: How much do you think reusing the bus fleets actually saves? Compared to have one big fleet that transports all schools at the same time, you need less buses, and probably save a little by paying less drivers for more time, but I'd expect the cost of fuel to dominate, which should be about the same regardless. Operating more busses also means that each is sustaining less wear per day as well.

Hmm, they definitely did do that. But couldn't they do that anyway if all the schools were at the same time? Admittedly you've have high schoolers and first graders on the same bus, but it would certainly save on fuel...

Three separate trips means a third the number of buses to service the same number of people (assuming equal distribution). And a third the number of drivers/etc.

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