The Surprising Reasons Why School in the U.S. Starts So Early (With Map of Average School Start Times by State)

It’s a tired tradition: After being pulled out of bed before the sun is up, teenagers across the U.S. are staggering into first period on too little sleep—even as researchers, doctors, and many educators agree that later mornings would better match adolescent biology.

The debate isn’t about whether teens need more rest—they do (at least eight to 10 hours a night)—but about why so many districts can’t (or won’t) budge their bell schedules. The answer isn’t a single villain; it’s a tangle of buses, budgets, calendars, and competing priorities that make a seemingly simple fix surprisingly hard to pull off.

Nashville Shows the Challenge

In Nashville, for example, some students board buses at 5:30 a.m., and high schools ring the first bell at 7:05. Local leaders pushing for change keep returning to the science: melatonin release occurs later at night in adolescents than adults, so, as Tennessee State Representative John Ray Clemmons put it to NPR in 2023, “waking a teen at 7 a.m. is akin to waking one of us at 4 a.m.”

The case for delay looks obvious: Early starts feed chronic sleep debt that’s tied to mood disorders, risky driving, and metabolic problems, and teens have worse academic outcomes when they’re sleep-deprived. But families also worry about after-school jobs, childcare for siblings, and transportation strain, all of which surfaced in Nashville’s recent debate.

You May Also Like …

  • 11 Secrets of School Bus Drivers
  • Blue Books Are Back, Thanks to the Rise of AI Cheating in Schools
  • 11 Ways School Was Different in the 1800s

Bus Schedules and Algorithms

When it comes to obstacles to later start times, transportation is the brick wall many districts hit first: Most school districts run “tiered” systems that cycle the same buses through high school, then middle, then elementary routes. Shift one tier, and the rest wobble.

When Boston explored later starts, the district enlisted MIT researchers to design new routing algorithms—not just to squeeze efficiency from existing fleets, but to model equitable start-time options…

Story continues

TRENDING NOW

LATEST LOCAL NEWS