Daylight Savings Time
Franklin A. Cook
Published in The Delta
Discovery :
People are mostly
diurnal biological creatures. That
means that most of us will feel natural activity cycles of being sleepy or
alert depending on the sunlight.
People can overcome this and fight against it in order to be active
during the time of their own choice by will power and/or by use of drugs (like
caffeine). It can be difficult,
but because of our location in the world this is even more difficult for us. If you go by solar time then in the
winter solar time and clock time are pretty much the same for people in
Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau.
During the summer solar time for them is just one hour earlier than
clock time (clock says noon, but it is really about 11 AM). One hour is not a very difficult adjustment. For us it is different.
We are 400+ miles to
the West. During the winter we are
already an hour and 50 minutes earlier than clock time (clock says noon, but it
is really about 10:10 AM). Now we
are participating in daylight savings time and there is a two hour and 50
minute difference between what the clock says and the biological signals we get
from our environment (the sun).
Now when the clock says noon the actual solar time is about 9:10 AM. That is almost three hours
earlier! If you ever felt like you
should be having breakfast at noon instead of lunch now you know why. If a parent is finding it hard to get
their child to school on time at 8:30 government time when their biological
clock is telling them that it is really closer to 5:30 in the morning it begins
to make more sense. Think about
it.
Would we still be participating in daylight savings
time if there were a three hour difference in Anchorage and Juneau? I would like to see them all set their
clocks to spring forward two additional hours and see how well they adjust.
After
writing this article I put together some research showing student attendance
the weeks before and the weeks after the spring change to day light savings
time in the chart below. I sent
that in to my state legislatures in thewinter of 08/09 to be added together
with many other citizen complaints about the same thing in an order to pass
house bill 19 to eliminate DST in Alaska.
Lewis Angapak Memorial School (Tuntutuliak) Over a Three
Year Period
Improving student attendance has been one of my greatest challenges as a school administrator. The change to daylight savings time each spring is not a simple and meaningless inconvenience in western Alaska. It is a detriment to my efforts to improve attendance. As can be seen in the graph above; the number of students coming to school late often triples after the time change. It is frustrating to have the state seemingly working against my efforts by supporting this useless time change every spring.
Franklin A. Cook
Site Administrator
LAM School, Tuntutuliak
February 2009