Admittedly, I am out of touch on many things. It comes from not having omnipotent teens in the house.What caught me off guard was the news the local public schools open next week. In Missouri, technically it is against the law for schools to open before Labor Day, unless they....
There are a lot of unlesses.
So here is where I need your help. I'm old, schools used to open a day or two after labor Day in my era. So why do they open so early now?
Is it a function of No child Left Behind? A bone tossed for working parents? Do we have dumber kids now, who need more time in class? How did they get the Teachers Union buy in. Truly, I don't know and welcome your answers.
Toad
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15 comments:
They open earlier now so that two months after at least a week long Christmas break they (the teachers as well as the students) can have a week long spring break.
And spring break is sacred. For no matter how many snow days there are in December an January, it is NEVER made up over spring break -- but tacked on to the end of the year.
It doesn't seem right to me to start school in August.
In NY where we live, they still do open after labor day. In the faming mid-west where my husband grew up, they go in early August to be let out in early may as the crop season started each year...
With the advent of mandated 180 day school years, they must open earlier and close later. Also, each regions growing season is different. Summer break is timed for Harvest, whatever Harvest might be. We always opened in August in Oklahoma and ended Memorial Day. I preferred it to the current area where we live, which lets out in June. Many teachers often prefer the Aug - May schedule over staying the better part of the month of June as one must do a time step to keep kids engaged when the weather turns warm.
Agreeing with all here - it's not so new as "no child." We are, gratefully, being released before the Memorial Day weekend; for a while we went into the first of June. It was torture. I had not put together Martha's spring break knowledge, but think that is probably why the start date is pushed back. My boys' school starts the last week of August, but I noticed my high school...starts Monday. Yikes.
Here in the North we need to have those extra days to cover the "Snow Days".
Thank you each for clarifying the new world order for me. In the old days school was labor Day till Memorial Day. Few in the STL or KC of my youth farmed so while I historically understood the harvest schedule, it never made sense to me.
Going back to school in August, is 20th century agrarian based outmoded - but it's still happening....for our agriculture based communities here in Wisconsin - other districts follow suit to keep it somewhat in sync.
Private schools set their own calendars - typically based on a required number of days in session - and we all like our long holiday (2 wk) and spring vacations (2 wks +) and approx 5 long weekends over the course of theyear.....therefore will get underway a bit earlier in the summer to allow for that.
I probably live in the same general area as you. I have two children in private school and one in public. The public school starts earlier because they have more required contact days than the private school. They start early so they can get their finals in before the Christmas break/Winter holiday (public school).
My other thought is that several teachers I know in both public and private schools manage the swimming operations at some of the clubs around and need to be free by Memorial Day.
Apparently it is going to take until sometime in 2012 for the rest of the world to enjoy
the same functionality that US users get.
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