There was a time when starting school before the Labor Day holiday was unheard of, and classrooms were already shut down for the summer by the end of May instead of the beginning of June.But over the years, the dates have changed and the holidays have fluctuated.
School systems across the country are now beginning around mid-August or a little before. Some get the books out a full month before the former September start date, and where year-round school is practiced, students are already back in their desks by the middle of July.
“To me it’s crazy. It doesn’t make sense,” said State Rep. Craig Ford (D)-Etowah.
That’s why Ford, along with the Association of Alabama Camps, the Chamber of Commerce Association of Alabama and the Alabama Bureau of Tourism and Travel are pushing this legislative session for a mandatory 11-week summer for school systems throughout the state.
“It’s common sense legislation,” Ford said. “August is the hottest month of the year, and we have kids in school buses without air conditioners. And I think it’s a way to increase revenue for the state of Alabama, which goes back into funding education.”
A bill outlining that schools either start the second or third week of August, depending on the number of Mondays in the month, and end before Memorial Day, was introduced when the legislature reconvened in early February.
A hearing has been scheduled for Wednesday, March 5, and representatives from the supporting organizations, as well as concerned parents, intend to be there to plead their case.
The Calendar As It Stands
Currently all school systems and school boards have control over their own individual starting and ending dates, as well as when to take vacation days during the year.
According to state law, there must be 180 student instructional days and teachers have an additional seven workdays that must be tacked on either before, after or during the school year.
Schools are also allowed to take off for holidays and federal days of observation, including winter holidays, Thanksgiving, Labor Day, Veteran’s Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Spring Break and possible inclement weather days.
Only one school system in the state of Alabama began this academic year operating on a full-scale, year-round schedule. According to the Alabama State Department of Education Website, Shelby County Schools convened classes on July 16, three and a half weeks before the majority of the 131 school systems in Alabama started.
The system will end the year on May 22, the same day or within days of most of the systems in the state, but only a week earlier than 50 others.
Locally, Pell City, Talladega city and Talladega County all operate on the same open and close schedule. This year classes started for all three systems on Aug. 9 and will end on May 22, giving students roughly a 10-week summer.
The Sylacauga city system will end this academic year on the same day, but started back a week before its peers on Aug. 2, making their vacation time a week shorter.
Bill supporters are saying the days aren’t being taken off of summer to add as more instruction days — with the current calendar students are still only doing their mandated 180 instruction days. Rather, starting early gives the schools more available days to take off throughout the year.
The Proposed “Compromise”
Originally, Ford proposed a bill pushing the school start date back to its former Sept. 3 slot, but it never picked up the momentum against the superintendents’ desire to finish the first semester and exams before students are dismissed for winter holidays.
Ford said he sees House Bill 179, which was introduced before the legislature close to three weeks ago, as a good compromise between both sides, addressing what he believes are the “primal concerns of each group involved in this issue.”
“I’d still like to start school after Labor Day, but they say you can’t do that and still finish the first semester before winter break,” Ford said. “So we think this is a compromise. They can’t start before the dates the bill says, but it still gives the schools enough time to finish the first semester up before the holidays.”
In order to reach that compromise, the proposed bill specifies that, “student instruction in elementary and secondary schools under the jurisdiction of the State Board of Education shall begin on or after the third Monday in August, if the month has five Mondays; or on or after the second Monday in August, if the month of August has four Mondays. Student instruction shall end on or before the Friday immediately preceding the Monday on which Memorial Day is observed.”
The proposed bill allows for 205 days in the school year, accommodating the mandatory 180 instructional days and allowing for 25 vacation days to be used however the individual systems wish. If passed by the legislature, the bill would become known as the School Start Date Act of 2008.
Working Parents and the Economic Impact
One issue raised by extended summer supporters is how the shorter summers, not to mention numerous days off during the school year, affects working parents.
Members of the Chamber of Commerce Association of Alabama were sitting at the annual conference when they decided to look at the issue more closely.
“Our Board of Directors was talking and we said, ‘Is this something we can sink our teeth into and really make a difference for our business?’” said Heidi Edwards, director of the Greater Talladega Area Chamber of Commerce.
The CCA represents 122 chambers made up of 60,000 businesses statewide. Edwards said during the summer months, on average, productivity as well as attendance tends to drop heavily in the eight or nine weeks allotted for summer vacation because so many employees are trying to squeeze in vacations with their children and families.
“We need more time for our employees to take vacations with their families,” Edwards said.
Ralph Stacey, president and CEO of the CCA, echoed her sentiments, saying there needs to be more time allotted for family trips and planned vacations.
“It compresses family time into a very small window, and that’s not good for the families or for the employers, because everyone wants off at the same time,” he said.
The problem of absenteeism and low productivity also rears its head on the one- or two-day breaks scattered throughout the school year as well.
“Having 80 percent of the state made up of wonderful small businesses that are comprised of less than 25 people, it erodes the productivity of the small businesses,” Stacey said.
Edwards said in a lot of situations both parents are employed, and when a child has an unexpected weather day in the middle of the week or is given a three- or four-day weekend, the parents have to scramble to find someone to watch their children, or if there aren’t any options, take the kids to work with them.
“Having so many days throughout the school calendar year, parents have to find someone to watch their children for one day here and one day there, or in the case of a weather day when school gets called off early in the morning, parents are stuck and are saying, ‘What do I do now?’ so they have to call in sick because they don’t have anyone else to take care of them, and then they’re losing money because they’re not working,” she said.
On the state economic side of the coin, businesses and tourism have charted significant losses in revenue during the July and August months because of the early school start dates.
According to numbers taken from the Alabama Bureau of Tourism on the impact of early August school start dates on August tourism along the Alabama Gulf Coast 2004-2006, condominium occupancy decreased 23 percent from July to August and it was estimated that the state lost more than $40 million in annual revenue in lodging and retail sales.
Arguably more than any other businesses, the earlier school start date affects the 90 Alabama camps and the camp business the most. Allen McBride, owner of Camp Mac in Munford and president of the Association of Alabama Camps, said it’s very simply put:
“You can’t have summer camp without summer,” he said.
Phillip Moultrie, a father of three children in the Hoover City School System and a strong supporter of the SaveAlabamaSummers.Org campaign, which is designed to spread awareness about the issue and encourage supporters to speak out, said his children’s camp time is already cut short with the shortened summer, and then the family has to move up their vacation as well, which either makes camp even shorter or cancels it altogether.
“They’re involved in a number of camps and activities, and it’s intruding on that,” Moultrie said. “Typically we liked to take later vacations, but we can’t do that anymore. Now we take it earlier, and that gets in the way of camps.”
The Number One Customers — the Children
Aside from the funding boom back to the Alabama economy and the stress relief for parents, Ford said the number one reason to put a school start date law into place is the children.
To any educators arguing that he and his partnering organizations are only concerned with money instead of what’s best for the children, Ford said the first thing he can say is that “they’re wrong because it’s about the children first and the heat.”
Next on his list is introducing a bill making all school buses air-conditioned.
“I’d say all you have to do is back your calendar up a couple of weeks and you’ll save a child’s life,” he said. “And the money is for the kids. Education is about dollars and funding, it always has been, and putting programs into the classrooms…The cost of technology is always on the rise because of technology.”
According to the Tulsa World and the SaveAlabamaSummers.org Website, public schools in Tulsa, Okla. pushed their school start date back to the traditional post-Labor Day schedule because of the high cost of cooling buildings in August, as well as the danger the heat poses to children. The system saved $500,000 in cooling bills simply for moving school back a few weeks.
Still, money, tourism dollars, parent work schedules and allotted days aside, there’s the always-important need for children to have recreation.
“There’s not a month that there’s not some kid in school in Alabama,” McBride said. “And education doesn’t happen just in the classroom either.”
For more information on legislation dealing with the school start date, visit www.savealabamasummers.org
