Dear Future President,  

      For youths and children, striving academically is the most significant aspect in their burgeoning lives; a strong education leads to a knowledgeable mind and a sophisticated, lucrative job. However, many students are not performing to their paramount competence, contributing to this significantly is a commonality that a plethora of students suffer from: a lack of sleep. All youths require 8 to 9 hours of sleep, but the current school system prohibits this requirement from being met, giving the average student only 7 hours of sleep, thus hindering not only the academic ability and performance of the student, but also the everyday execution and functionality. Sleep is also a necessity for keeping healthy, including the prevention of migraines and headaches, symptoms of a lack of sleep that drastically cripple a student's cognitive ability. Despite the school system's responsibility in this situation, the school system and you, Mr. President, have the potency to convert this negative effect on students to a positive one through changing school hours or lessening homework loads, examples of that will ameliorate the amount of stress and lethargy school plus a lack of sleep brings and enhance the enjoyment of the student experience for all youths involved with education.

       A lack of sleep as a student threatens a student's future with daunting, unfavorable likely possibilities; the most intimidating effect that may occur on a sleepless student's future is the effects on a student's cognitive ability in class and during homework. To illustrate, if a student is effete from a lack of sleep, then his or her ability to learn and to retain information will be handicapped, which may affect him or her on future tests about the information that was poorly retained when he or she was drained. In addition, students can be energy depleted to the extent where they are incapable of staying awake, according to startschoollater.com and several other websites, 33% of students have claimed to fall asleep in class. This symptom of lack of sleep is the most detrimental to a student's career, because he or she retained no information, which will drastically affect him or her on future tests. 

      Along with the negative effects on students' learning abilities, a lack of sleep may affect a student's health, short term and long term. Without an adequate amount of sleep, according to CDC.gov, a student may suffer from headaches and migraines, which will inhibit a student's motivation to learn and ability to learn. A lack of sleep may also lead to a weaker immune system, increasing the chances of a student to catch an illness thus having to miss classes until he or she returns to par wellness. These symptoms of a lack of sleep will create learning blocks and possibly absences, which are harmful to a student's success in academics. In addition, a lack of sleep can also cause obesity, a condition that affects a student's ability to concentrate and levels of energy. Obesity, although may not appear to affect a student in academia, makes students sluggish and lethargic, causing a loss of necessary energy that students need to survive the rigor of school. Therefore,  a lack of sleep drastically worsens a student's cognitive abilities and wellness, and it leads to a lack of energy, an abundance of learning blocks, health problems, and absences. 

      Despite these negative effects of a lack of sleep present, the school system continues to prevent an adequate amount of sleep. However, Mr./Mrs. President, it is certainly still possible to give students an adequate amount of sleep; for example, they can change school hours that incorporate the importance of sleep, or they can lessen the hours of homework. If the school system and you Mr./Mrs. President push school hours back to even an amount that is as insignificant as a half an hour, the change, which does not seem necessary, will add to the amount of sleep time that students have, thus enhancing their cognitive skills and attentiveness. Alternatively, you have the power to lessen the amount of homework, an important aspect in the student's career, but a power that many teachers abuse. If homework levels are lowered, students will be capable of having a healthy, or merely a required amount of sleep every night, which will augment their performance in class and in mundane activities. Despite these easy changes that will result in a beneficial outcome, many people claim that students should simply become more discipline and go to bed earlier. However these people do not account for all of the non-academic activities that a superfluity of students participate in, such as sports and jobs. In addition, students may be unable to go to sleep at a reasonable time because of the homework load that teachers assign. Therefore, schools and you, Mr./Mrs. President, should discover a way that allots students a reasonable amount of sleep, while accounting for the non academic events and activities that students partake in on a daily basis. 

      Overall, a main contributor to why many students appear to be absent consciously in the classroom is a lack of sleep. An adequate amount of sleep prevents health problems and crippled intellectual thinking, ultimately preventing negligence and misunderstandings in class. Mr./Mrs. President, you have the power to renovate the school systems in the favor of student's sleep time with various approaches that will all reach the same goal. Added sleep time for students benefits everyone involved in the school system; students are able to reason and think more clearly, teachers will teach students where the preponderance of them are able to focus, and the world will receive better educated students, because they were able to concentrate and grasp more information during class with the added sleep. 

            Sincerely,

                              Ryan J.