One reason for the early starts for high schools is that by staggering the start times for high school, middle school, and elementary school, school districts can use fewer buses and fewer drivers. If all the schools started at the same (more reasonable) time, you’d need three times as many buses and drivers and each driver would only get one or two hours a day (and thus would find something else to do, making the existing shortage of drivers even worse). The district I drive for has a transportation budget of about $3 million a year - we would not be able to afford $9 million a year and still afford our administrators’ enormous salaries.

They don’t need to push everyone later, they just need to start the younger kids early, and the older kids later, which is the opposite of what most districts do now. Pre-teens have no problem getting up at 6AM.

Parents fight that because then they can’t have the older kids take care of the younger kids.

and those parents should be fought by cps

It’s not the parent’s fault the media has made them terrified of everything that they can’t let their kids just go around the neighborhood while they’re at work.

yes, but if they’re afraid of that they shouldn’t be having their other kids watch over their younger ones

What’s the alternative?