I agree that middle/high school is arguably starting too early (especially since research has shown, I believe, that teens really should be sleeping later).

In the case of elementary school, though, you are dealing with kids young enough that they probably cannot reliably be counted on the get ready and leave for school on their own, and so you need to fit school times in with their parent's work schedule.

> Although isn't the idea of "permanent DST" an oxymoron?

It's slightly different from no-DST in that "the sun is directly above" is no longer approximately noon, ever; the TZ is effectively 1 hour off of what is should be and DST is abolished. (The sun would be overhead at ~1pm year-round.)

(It would also mean that during winter, in some locales, the sun would not rise until after 9am. I personally like seeing the sun in the morning.)

Everyone agrees that the schools start too early, but there are so many idiots who throw up reasons why they are afraid to change. It's like a mark twain novel of a small town in Misssissippi in the 1800s. In my town, the latest reason why we couldn't start later was "we'll mismatch for athletic events for schools from nearby towns". Then the other nearby school districts switched, and our asshole district said, its still too scary, and waited one more year, and now we are 40 minutes later. We should go another half hour later.