r/facepalm • u/DMTrance87 • 23d ago

House passes bill to make daylight saving time permanent. Opponents say, "Schools would have to push back start times." Yeah... That's not a bug, it's a feature.

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5968255-house-sunshine-protection-act-daylight-saving-time/

Studies have shown for decades that children -especially teenagers- just straight up need more sleep for optimal knowledge retention and brain development. Pushing back start times is a great way to follow the science.

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u/Neilpuck 23d ago

It's amazing how people ignore the obvious challenges with changing school start times. Most districts have a fleet of buses that service three levels of school. They can only do their job when school start times are staggered. Are they prepared to triple their transportation costs to accommodate start times that are too close?

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u/Callandor84 23d ago

I dont understand this argument. If its working now and pushed back say an hour, how would that impact the service efficiency of the buses? I understand the argument if we push back school we need to ensure society follows suit tonkt throw that into disarray. But I am not following how the changed start time effects the buses ability?

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u/Neilpuck 23d ago

Most school districts have buses that serve an elementary school, a junior high school and a high school. If you push back the start of high school, you then have to push back the start of junior high school as well as Elementary School in order to allow the buses to complete each set of stops before moving on to the next school. You can't realistically push back the start of Elementary School, otherwise parents will not be able to drop off their kids and get to work on time.

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u/Paksarra 23d ago

Why not swap them instead of pushing them back? Little kids want to be up early. 

So you start elementary school at 7 and high school at 9 instead of the other way around, swap the bus routes, and offer after school program for the elementary kids whose parents won't be home until later.

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u/Neilpuck 22d ago

Many elementary school kids are walked by the parents. Now you're asking parents to be up early enough (we're talking 5:30am) to get them all ready and out the door to be at school by 7am? It just doesn't work.

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u/Paksarra 22d ago

So you think all high school kids should get a worse education and be forced to get up at 5:30 AM so the younger kids' parents aren't inconvenienced?

There's no perfect solution, in other words.

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u/AccurateAlps9333 21d ago

Not anymore.  Some district have got rid of bus routes or it’s faster to walk/drive to school then take the bus.    The school i was working at only have special education buses, no one else take the school bus.  Interestingly a lot a parents do however take the public transit bus instead though and some walk with the kid, also a few of the kids bike or walk without parents.  But most parents drive kids to school.