TN-Why the early am start?

[mattemma04]

Does anyone know why Tennessee has a 7:45am start time for the younger children, and an 8:30am start for the older students? I have been looking at properties in TN,and I checked out the schools. Here in Ohio(Brunswicck) I see the older kids go outside for the bus at 7:40am,and the younger children are catching the bus closer to 9am. Just seems like such an early start for the little ones in TN.

[TiredX2]

From studies they have done on brain functioning the older kids should be starting later... much later.

Good chance it is just bus economics or the like.

[liawbh]

As far as I can tell, school start times vary wildly everywhere. When we were in Portland, DS started school at 8:45 at one school, 8:15 at another, and now here school starts at 8:00. All at different elementary schools in the same state.

[alegna]

Around here different levels of school (elem, middle school, HS) have different start times so that they can use the same buses for as many kids as possible.

Money talks.

-Angela

[sha_lyn]

Here ele starts around 7:45 (its an odd time like 7:43 for some reason) middle school starts about 30 min later, and HS 30 min after that. As alegne said, it is because they all use the same busses. It would be too expensive, and cause too much traffic, to have a dedicated bus system for each school.

[nikandgeisel]

Not only does it have to do with the busses (which is a big part of the decision), but also to do with childcare. In the school district I work in, the elementary kids start earlier so parents can get to work or older siblings can watch them if parents have to leave earlier than than the busses come. Our older kids start a bit later due to the research that says older children (teens) Naturally wake later and start thinking better later in the day. Now to truly follow this research they would need to start around noon probably

[kathipaul]

There have been a lot of recent studies done on sleep in children that have found that teenagers need more sleep than they are getting. Many schools are exploring the idea of starting elementary earlier and high school later. Younger children go to sleep earlier and actually don't need more sleep than they can get from this pattern whereas many teenagers are working and staying up late doing homework and socializing and need more sleep.

[jannan]

here in sf the starting times vary widely. some schools start at 7:50,8:40 and 9:30. it has nothing to do with age . has to do with what the school board has told that particular school

[chel]

not all of TN is like that. We're moving, but the public magnet school dd would have gone to starts at 9am and ends at 4 (which I think is too late). It's all about busing. As the magnet students, if riding a bus, would have to take a bus from home to the zoned school and then another bus would take them to the magnet school. If dd would do this I'm sure she would leave home around 7:30 and get back to the zoned school around 4:30 (no service to a neighborhood as the neighborhood buses would have already left the zoned school).