Wednesday Deadline to Petition White House to Start High School After 8 a.m.

Anyone who has ever wondered why many high school kids tend to doze off or zone out in the classroom should keep reading this article.

A mountain of research suggests that hormones in teenagers’ bodies make them want to stay awake longer at night and that the only way they can make up for the resulting loss of sleep is by getting more of it in the morning instead of getting up as early as 5 a.m. to make it to school in time.

If you support the idea that high school should start a bit later in the day, here’s your chance to make a difference in this longstanding national issue by signing an online petition to the White House.

No less than 5,000 signatures are needed by Wednesday, Nov. 2, to enable a White House response—and only about a fifth that number are believed to be in so far.

Any U.S. resident over the age of 13 years can sign the petition, which can also be viewed by going to this website.

"Just sending a the link to 10 friends anywhere in the U.S. and asking them to sign and send the link to 10 more could actually make this work," says Terra Snider in her Oct. 13 Severna Park Patch post on . "I know everyone’s busy, but please consider how much good we could do if we all just took a few minutes."

Proving that there is power in numbers, an online petition titled "Taking Action to Reduce the Burden of Student Loan Debt," by Roberto Rodriguez, received an official White House response on the We the People website.

Snider also said there is also a new petition on the We the People website, asking that the petitions be given more than 30 days. That petition expired on Thursday, Oct. 27, because of a lack of sufficient signatures.