What Date Do Schools Start Back Again for Calhoun County Florida

Story highlights

• School starts in August or fifty-fifty July for many schools
• Educators say examination prep and learning patterns are improved past earlier commencement dates

Daphne Sashin is a producer with the CNN social discovery team. Reach her on Twitter @dsashin.

(CNN)First came the summer camp promotion from the YMCA of Metro Atlanta, crashing like a brick into my inbox June 17.

"Six more weeks of summer," the subject line taunted. "Make 'em fun!"

Didn't the fine people at the YMCA know that the summertime solstice had not nonetheless arrived? And still, hither they were, telling me and my four-year-old that nosotros had only six more weeks of summer?!

But, going by the school agenda, they were right. My son starts pre-kindergarten today at our neighborhood school. That'due south right -- August 5. Information technology's the same for children in cities and towns across the country, including in Phoenix, Oklahoma Metropolis, Indianapolis and Monterey, California. Lots of schools join them the following week and all throughout August.

Nosotros're not bang-up any records hither. In Hawaii and parts of Indiana and Arizona, kids have been in class since late July.

Having grown upwardly in New England, where I was nevertheless writing letters domicile from summer campsite in late August, I was perplexed and awash in nostalgia-fueled angst. What happened to school starting later on Labor Day?

It turns out a lot of parents have the same question, and at that place are answers.

But beginning, a short history of school calendars: Kids didn't always have summers off. In fact, summer vacation every bit nosotros know it is a pretty recent phenomenon. When the public education system started in the 1800s, calendars varied depending on the needs of the community. In cities, schools were open up practically year-round, up to 240 days a year. Rural schools, on the other hand, were open for merely about five months over two sessions, in the winter and summertime. Autumn and leap, school was out and then children could help harvest the crops and help with planting, said John Rury, a historian of American education at the University of Kansas.

Past the late 1800s, a concern for the professionalization of teachers, periodic financial shortfalls and "the ill effect of too much schooling on students' and teachers' health" were among the factors that moved school leaders to eliminate the summer term, said Kenneth Gold, interim dean of teaching at The College of Staten Island/CUNY and the author of "School's In: The History of Summer Education in American Public Schools."

In the early on 20th century, the rural and urban districts came into alignment then pretty much everyone had a 180-day schoolhouse year that started after Labor Day and ended in June.

OK, so when did August get the new September?

There are more than than 12,000 school districts in the country, and all sorts of laws and reasons govern when they can start and who decides. All the instruction experts I spoke with seemed to agree that through the 1980s, Labor Day even so ruled. But by the mid-1990s, especially in the South, districts began to hop aboard the August train. The final fourth dimension schools started after Labor Twenty-four hours in my current habitation of Atlanta, it was 1996.

This year, districts in states from Florida to Kansas to California will get-go in August and end around Memorial Day.

There are still enough of schools that start later Labor Day. The afterwards appointment is pop in the Northeast, for ane, and in Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia, in that location are state laws backed by the local tourism manufacture that prohibit schools from starting before Labor Day unless they have a waiver.

Only, even in those states, some schools are starting in Baronial. This yr in Virginia, students in Prince William Canton will start school before Labor Day for the outset time. In Minnesota, Minneapolis is one district that receives an exemption to start earlier Labor Day, saying the traditional agenda "no longer supports what our children demand to exist successful in the 21st century."

Why start earlier Labor Day? Practise schools hate summer?

I spoke with several instruction professors and the head of scheduling for Atlanta Public Schools, and they offered several reasons:

• An earlier start date gives teachers more instructional time before statewide assessment tests in the spring. Several experts agreed that this is one of the biggest factors pushing calendars back.

• Beginning in August allows students to complete the start semester before the December holiday pause, rather than taking tests and turning in big projects after two weeks off. Teachers don't have to spend fourth dimension reviewing material in January when they should be starting new lessons. Those were some of the reasons given by the Los Angeles Unified School District when information technology moved up its commencement date in 2012.

• Starting early allows for a autumn break in September or October and a winter suspension effectually February, in addition to breaks around Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. Teachers are happier and kids bear better when they accept more than breaks throughout the year, said Rebecca Kaye, the Atlanta Public Schools policy and governance adviser, who makes the yearly calendar. "Learning is hard work, and teaching is hard work, and people need breaks," Kaye said. "We have gotten feedback from our employees that they need that fourth dimension."

• When you start after Labor Day and end schoolhouse in June, that terminal calendar month is simply not taken as seriously. "That end of the year is perceived as being fourth dimension that is sometimes not used to the maximum value," Kaye said. And in fact, when Atlanta schools ended in June, a lot of kids simply didn't show up afterward Memorial Twenty-four hours. "Even though we were having schoolhouse afterwards Memorial Day, people had it in their minds that schoolhouse concluded. Information technology may seem ridiculous, but that's what happened."

• Many graduating students and staff members have summer courses at colleges and universities. Catastrophe school around Memorial Day creates fewer conflicts for them.

I guess those reasons trump my nostalgia. Merely isn't it also hot for school in August? Is that the best apply of coin?

Wouldn't schools save coin by starting later?

That's what some critics argue. They say that earlier dates put actress force per unit area on schools' ac systems and that it would exist less expensive to have summer vacation during the hottest role of the year.

Atlanta Public Schools analyzed the costs and adamant that at that place would exist minimal, if any, savings by shifting the school year. In that location are people working in the schools pretty much year-round. "Schools are bustling with activities: summer school programs, summertime camps and maintenance activities. And y'all can't just close downward the air conditioning; the applied science requires a sure amount of climate-control to protect the equipment," Kaye said.

Fine. Maybe information technology's not so bad ...

I'll get used to this calendar, Kaye says. She points out that parents similar me tend non to be quite equally nostalgic for school in late June. Getting out at Memorial Day is nice, and I suppose June is a lovely time to holiday. Unfortunately, it probably ways my kids won't exist able to nourish ane of the summer camps in New England that ends a week afterward our schools have started. She sympathizes with my plight. But she has more pressing concerns.

If information technology was upwards to her, she says, she would extend the school twelvemonth even longer, like the urban schools in the 1800s.

"I would honey to accept that 220-24-hour interval agenda, because our kids -- the majority of the students in the system -- if they're non in schoolhouse, they're not learning."

When does your child start school? Is it as well early, too belatedly or just right? Counterbalance in with CNN Parents on Facebook .

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Source: https://www.cnn.com/2015/08/04/living/school-start-dates-august-parents-feat/index.html

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