ENG 122 Module 3: sample paper, in real form

The 7:20 Bell: Why Maple Ridge High School Should Start the School Day Later

[Author Name]

Department of English, Southern New Hampshire University

ENG 122: English Composition I

Module 3 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

August 11, 2026

Original model document written as a teaching example. Maple Ridge Regional High School is a composite and the school survey described inside is illustrative. The published research and federal figures cited in the essay are real and can be checked.

A 7:20 Bell

The first bus leaves the north end of the district at 6:05 in the morning, and the students riding it have been awake for close to an hour by then. Maple Ridge Regional High School, a school of 1,340 students, rings its first bell at 7:20. That time was set decades ago so the same buses could make three runs before eight o'clock, and it has not been examined since. Nobody decided that teenagers should be tired. The schedule simply happened, and the tiredness came with it. Maple Ridge should move its first bell to 8:30, because the change would give students sleep they cannot get any other way, and because the objections raised against it are scheduling problems rather than reasons to keep an early start.

The usual reply is that students should go to bed earlier. That advice ignores what changes in a teenage body. During adolescence the internal clock that decides when a person feels sleepy shifts later, so most teenagers cannot fall asleep much before eleven even while lying in bed trying to (Adolescent Sleep Working Group, 2014). Telling a sixteen-year-old to be asleep at nine is close to telling an adult to be asleep at seven. The same group of doctors recommends that middle and high schools begin no earlier than 8:30, and the sleep physicians reviewing the same research three years later reached the same hour (American Academy of Sleep Medicine, 2017). Two independent bodies looked at the question and landed in the same place.

Most American schools are nowhere near that hour. A federal survey covering about 39,700 public middle and high schools found an average start time of 8:03 in the morning, with only 17.7 percent beginning at 8:30 or later (Wheaton et al., 2015). Maple Ridge starts 43 minutes ahead of that average. The arithmetic at home is simple enough for anyone to do. A student on the north route wakes at 5:45. To reach eight hours, which is the bottom of the range those doctors recommend, that student would need to be asleep by 9:45 the night before. A survey the school paper ran last spring, answered by 312 students, put the median bedtime at 11:15. The gap is not laziness. It is a schedule.

What Happened Where the Bell Moved

The strongest evidence comes from a district that made the change and let researchers measure what followed. In 2016 Seattle moved its high schools from 7:50 to 8:45. Instead of asking students how they had slept, researchers had two groups of sophomores wear wrist monitors, one group in the year before the change and one in the year after. Students in the later-starting year slept about 34 minutes more each night, and their grades in the same class, taught by the same teachers, rose by 4.5 percent. Attendance and late arrivals improved at the school serving more low-income families (Dunster et al., 2018). The size of any single number is not the point. The point is that the sleep was gained and kept.

The gain also appears in money, which matters to a school board weighing a cost. A study by the RAND Corporation modeled what would follow if every American school began at 8:30 or later, counting fewer crashes among young drivers and stronger performance later in working life. The estimate came to roughly nine billion dollars a year for the national economy after two years, and a far larger figure across a decade (Hafner et al., 2017). A number that large rests on assumptions, and the authors say so themselves. Even a fraction of it, set beside the cost of new bus routes, makes the change look less like an expensive favor to teenagers than like an overdue correction.

What makes this change unusual is its price next to what it buys. Districts spend years and large sums chasing better results through new curriculum, tutoring programs and testing. Moving a bell costs a route redesign and a season of complaints. Economists writing for the Hamilton Project reviewed the research on how schools are scheduled and placed later start times among the few changes with a clear benefit and a modest cost, alongside decisions about which grades share a building (Jacob & Rockoff, 2011). A change that needs no new teachers, no new building and no new program is rare enough that a district should have a strong reason before refusing it.

The Objections, Answered

The objections are real and deserve to be stated at full strength. Maple Ridge runs 18 buses on three tiers, and the high school goes first so the same drivers can carry elementary children afterward. Flipping those tiers puts younger children at stops in the dark. Coaches point out that only two fields have lights, so a later dismissal pushes practice toward evening and eats into homework. Parents who leave for work at seven say an 8:30 bell leaves teenagers at home alone for an hour, and juniors and seniors with afternoon jobs say a later dismissal costs them shifts. Behind all of it sits a plainer suspicion: that students handed a later start will simply stay up later, and the district will have paid for nothing.

That last worry is the one that can be tested, and it has been. In Seattle bedtimes barely moved after the change. Students fell asleep at about the same hour and woke later, which is why the extra half hour survived the year (Dunster et al., 2018). The bus problem is a cost rather than an argument, and costs can be quoted: districts that flip their tiers report one-time route work and, in some places, extra buses, which is the kind of expense the RAND model weighed against the benefit it found (Hafner et al., 2017). Practice schedules did shift in Seattle, and coaches adapted, as they already do for weather and shared fields. The supervision and the lost shifts are the most honest objections here, and they argue for a staffed early room and a phased first month, not for keeping 1,340 students short of sleep.

None of this makes the change free. Someone pays for new routes, some families lose a convenient hour, and one scheduling season will be miserable. The fair question is what the present arrangement costs and who is paying it. Right now the bill is settled quietly by students who arrive at 7:20 on six and a half hours of sleep, and it is settled again every school day. A district that would not ask its teachers to work on that much sleep should not ask it of the people the school exists for. Maple Ridge set its bell once for the convenience of a bus fleet. It can set it again for the students who ride.

References

Adolescent Sleep Working Group, Committee on Adolescence, & Council on School Health. (2014). School start times for adolescents. Pediatrics, 134(3), 642-649.

American Academy of Sleep Medicine. (2017). Delaying middle school and high school start times promotes student health and performance: An American Academy of Sleep Medicine position statement. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 13(4), 623-625.

Dunster, G. P., de la Iglesia, L., Ben-Hamo, M., Nave, C., Fleischer, J. G., Panda, S., & de la Iglesia, H. O. (2018). Sleepmore in Seattle: Later school start times are associated with more sleep and better performance in high school students. Science Advances, 4(12).

Hafner, M., Stepanek, M., & Troxel, W. M. (2017). Later school start times in the U.S.: An economic analysis. RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2109.html

Jacob, B. A., & Rockoff, J. E. (2011). Organizing schools to improve student achievement: Start times, grade configurations, and teacher assignments. The Hamilton Project, Brookings Institution.

Wheaton, A. G., Ferro, G. A., & Croft, J. B. (2015). School start times for middle school and high school students - United States, 2011-12 school year. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 64(30), 809-813.