Study Shows Teens Benefit from a Later School Day As the parent of two teenagers, the news that, given an extra half hour of sleep in the morning makes high school aged students more alert and productive comes as no surprise to me. This study was conducted at St. George's School in Rhode Island last year and the researchers found that by starting the school day just 30 minutes later significantly reduced the number of students late to their first period classes and, in general, found students to be more actively and productively engaged in classroom activities.