With SB 71, Sen. Kruse addresses the problem of the ever-earlier school year. It prohibits school from starting before Labor Day and ending later than June 15.
I have no strong opinions on this one. I know that for the past 30 years I’ve heard my elders lament the fact that school starts before Labor Day. For me, normal is something like the last week in August. And, I’ve noticed myself getting to be one of those elders, shaking my head when school starts around August 15. For some reason, the opinions never seem as strongly held about the appropriate ending of school — though, I guess I’ve heard Memorial Day suggested.
If the earlier school year is related to the Fall ISTEP – so that they can “teach to the test” I have a serious issue. Also, August is the hottest month for most of Indiana – many schools (for some reason, especially elementaries) don’t have air conditioning. When people say “we didn’t have air conditioning when *I* went to school” I’m willing to bet they didn’t start in August either.
OK.. we start after Labor Day, we end by Memorial Day — how the hell do they expect us to get 180 days in that window? Remove all vacations and go on Saturdays? Do the math!
If you would believe me, and I hope you do, A few years back, the state of Ohio added another round of playoffs to the football season so more teams could compete in the year-end tournament. Rather than push the state finals further towards Thanksgiving, they decided to start the regular season a week earlier. I’m pretty sure I had ONE school year where the first football game was before the first day of school, then the following year, school started before this new early game and has been that way ever since. It looks like students in my district are probably starting on August 20 this year, which could be the earliest ever. Leap year puts everything on day earlier this year anyways, so it seems extra-early. I could really care less. I have air conditioning in my building now and still have to work 185 days no matter what so it makes no difference to me. I really don’t think this is something that needs to be legislated in any state. The year-round school movement is still in action, although it hasn’t really hit the midwest farm country yet. So what are they going to do if a school starts before labor day? Arrest the school principal? Or the school board? Hmmmmmm….
My dad is a school administrator and notes that these things aren’t dictated from on high, but are created after input from parents, teachers, etc. There are a few problems. First, the school year is at least 5 days longer than it was 20 years ago, possibly longer than that, but I know that a week was added in the 1980s. Second, 20 years ago making up snow days was not required, and now it is. Accordingly, unless one wants to schedule impromptu makeup days after graduation, most school districts build snow days into the schedule (which can be canceled if it gets to be April). People want a full week for spring break plus the Friday before, Good Friday, the Monday after Easter, two full weeks for Christmas, MLK Day, some sort of fall break, etc. As the second commenter notes, they have to shoehorn the 180 days in somewhere. There are ways to avoid starting school in mid-August: cut down on the length of breaks (start school again on Jan 3 this year, for instance, instead of giving the full two weeks), go deeper into June (even though most in Indiana have grown accustomed to being finished before or shortly after Memorial Day), go to school on minor holidays, or roll the dice on snow days and put makeup days on Saturday. Unquestionably, any of those changes would be met with a mixed reaction. Opinions on the school year remind me of the opinion polls where citizens overwhelmingly believe that taxes are too high but want the government to do more. Something has to give.
It’s all about the Benjamins. They’d probably just withhold money.
Yeah, I don’t like how it cuts into our family vacation time. I have meetings in early June, and VBS at the end of June. My wife teaches summer school at Valpo University all of July and early August. Pastors are busy during Christmas and spring break time-plus my wife’s spring break never coincides with our school district. So mid-August is our only time to get away as a family. In my day, young wipper-snapper, we started around Labor Day and got out around Memorial Day…AND WE LIKED IT! We had none of this new-fangled air-conditioning. AND WE LIKED IT!
I remember when I was in the third grade the Richmond teachers went on strike-and school started a few weeks late. We were not made to make up those days.
I don’t like the idea of standardized tests being the reasoning for starting so early. And yes I think we could get rid of a few unneccessary holidays-or say that they can be celebrated if not already used for a snow day.