Everybody has days where they are just tired. If it’s that they stayed up too late or couldn’t sleep. Middle school and high school students have this feeling every single day. Even when going to bed at a reasonable hour like 10:00, waking up at 7 o’clock to make a 7:30 bus leaves us falling asleep in class and being less productive. In one 2006 poll from the National Sleep Foundation, “45 percent of adolescents in the United States said they slept for an insufficient length of time on school nights, and 19 percent of students said they fell asleep in school at least once a week.” 19 percent is almost a fifth of students. One out of five students fell asleep in class at least once a week, There is an obvious problem here. Schools NEED to start later. And don’t get me wrong, some have but not enough for the statistics to significantly change. “Most middle schools and high schools across California will start no earlier than 8:30 a.m., under a new state law.” said Shannon Doyne, an experienced journalist for the New York Times. Everyone knows that kids don’t get enough sleep, but California actually did something about it. This is what everyone should be doing. According to new research published by Science Advances, “Starting school later allows adolescents to get more sleep, thus improving student’s physical and mental health, attendance, and academic performance.” There are so many benefits of starting school later. People might say that school shouldn’t start later because of sports and extracurricular activities. But there is a simple fix to this. The school does a survey to see who does sports and extracurricular activities. Then they put those people in study hall last period in the days that they do those things. Then, the people can leave school early to do their things, even with school starting later. School has been starting the same time for decades but, that doesn’t mean that is right. Students are sleep deprived almost every day and there is a way to fix it. The positives outweigh the negatives. Schools need to start later.