30 minutes is a lot to schools

Re “If teens get more sleep, we all gain,” Opinion, Sept. 7

Wendy M. Troxel and Marco Hafner skim over the real and serious reasons why the California School Boards Assn. has rightly opposed SB 328: This legislative overreach is not the “small change” they suggest.

School start times aren’t the issue. Surely more sleep would be be beneficial for teenagers, which is one reason why my own district went to a later high school start time years ago. But we oppose the “one size fits all” approach from Sacramento.

School start times at the roughly 3,000 secondary schools in California are set for many reasons: Working and single parents in some districts may not have the ability to adjust their work schedules, transportation demands and costs must be considered, and changing endtimes in turn limits students who rely on parttime work or access to local community colleges. The list of unintended consequences goes on.

The “logistical challenges” that Troxel and Hafner dismiss so casually are serious matters for locally elected governing boards, which are better placed than Sacramento to know what is right for their district.

Angela Cutbill Agoura Hills The writer is a trustee on Las Virgenes Unified School District Board of Education.

As a kid, I had a bedtime that was enforced because it was good for me. That idea seems to have disappeared from the parenting landscape.

Elementary school kids are now up watching “American Horror Story,” playing on their electronic devices or yakking and texting on cellphones. Parents attend social events mid-week and drag their children with them late into the night.

Bedtime and sleep is so “old school,” yet somehow my peers and I all went to bed between 8 and 10 p.m. as kids, and we were in school starting at 8 a.m. with reasonable success as students.

Moving back the school start time also pushes teachers and students into rush hour traffic they now can avoid. Plus, how many students won’t make the bell because the bus is stuck on the freeway?

Let’s not adopt a bogus fix that enables the bad habits of children and their parents.

Mitch Paradise Los Angeles

I was happy to see the opinion that high school should start at a later time so our rest-deprived teenagers can get more sleep.

I have two sucessful adult children. They get up in the middle of the night to catch planes and attend meetings. I don’t have to do anything.

It was not always such. When they were in high school, getting them out of bed was almost as hard as giving birth. I seriously worried about their futures.

Bravo to those who support getting kids successfully through high school.

Patricia LoVerme South Pasadena