Start of the School Year

I think school schedules should be adapted to the needs of the student families.

Growing up in an agricultural area where some of us worked the farms in August, which is also too hot indoors, our schools started in September.

Where I live now, schools start early in August. I'm not sure, but I suspect that brings the children who don't seem to work at all in agriculture here, likely due to more extreme weather, inside for the adults to focus on harvesting.

In Colorado, school start times vary considerably, even within each school district. Each school has its own reasons. I don't see any major problems with that. School hours, though? Those cause disastrous scheduling problems.

AFAIK, the school year in B.C. has always started after Labour Day, at the beginning of September. I shall have to check, but I live right across from a high school, and that's the way it's been.

England: Some time in the first week in Sept. Won't be before Sept 1st. The exact date varies by school. One of mine goes back on the 3rd the other on the 4th this year. Private schools start maybe a week or so later (they have shorter terms for some reason). Having any school at all in August seems an absolute travesty. August has always been 100% school holidays. State schools usually finish around the 3rd week in July so you always get part of July and all of August as the summer holiday. Private schools get most of July and all of August. I think all the children in the entire country would rebel if they were forced to go to school in August.

Not sure about Scotland. AFAIK Wales is pretty much the same as England but I think Scotland has its own schedule for school holidays and they start at the end of August. Not sure how Scottish school children feel about that though...

Lotsa the private school have already started in West LA. No idea what the publics are doing, but I think late August.

I agree with aspirit. School schedules should reflect the needs of the community.

It seems that more and more K-12 schools in CA have been adopting a "return to classes in mid-to-late August" schedule instead of waiting until after Labor day, and most finish in mid-to-late May instead of June. We have air conditioning in the schools now, so that's some of it. But there's also a desire to finish the semester before Christmas. The semester-system colleges and universities have been on this schedule for decades here.

Easter week is also being abandoned by many in favor of a spring break that always falls mid-semester in March, independent of the Easter holiday. It's a good idea, and I wish the college I teach at would do this so we don't have years like the last one, where spring break literally didn't fall until 3 weeks before the end of the semester.

There was a big educational movement some years back towards adopting a year-round model for the primary grades in particular where kids were in school for 45 days and on break for 15 year round. The idea was mainly about making better use of school facilities (in an era of increasing enrollment), but there was also a rationalization kids might retain more this way than they do over summer breaks. I don't know whether the data supported the latter idea.

The system is mostly being abandoned for various reasons. I think the stress of teachers and kids having to switch classrooms every couple of months, plus the never actually getting a real break for vacation and so on (and the challenges of families arranging for child care on that schedule and of families of kids and teachers not all being on the same rotation) led to some issues. Also, with school buildings in continuous use, there was no time for maintenance, and there was the added expense of staff being on full time schedules year round. Plus, if a family wanted to take a trip longer than the off time, their kids would have to miss some school (and teachers never had a time when they could take longer trips).

I've heard that schools in some very touristy areas have resisted the "go back before Labor day" movement for both K-12 and public colleges, because local businesses rely heavily on student workers during the summer months.

27th of January down here. Four terms, with a two week holiday between each of the first three and a bit longer (5-6 weeks) at the end of the year. They move up a grade at the January start.

It's very sensible, but that's because we organised our summer to fit in.

A lot of schools start in mid-August in order to make the semesters break as evenly as possible at the winter break. When families/students in our community were surveyed, the alternatives were immensely less popular. Starting later means you'd either have to:

A. Have your fall semester be a month shorter than your spring semester in terms of instructional days--which doesn't work out so hot if you're talking about a one semester course and trying to fit the same curriculum in. Even with starting mid-August, the spring semester is already on many calendars 2-3 weeks longer than the fall semester in terms of instructional days.

B. Have your spring semester not start until mid-late January--and many parents/students complain that they don't like going away for the winter break, then coming back for a week or two only to have finals. They prefer it divided cleanly at the semester, thus the early August start is the lesser of the two evils.

It's in our contract: we will not start until after Labor Day. In my district, that's two days of meetings, then school starts on the Thursday after Labor Day. The year before the contract, when we started before Labor Day, we still didn't start until the very end of August/beginning of September.

I'm ashamed to say I don't know why. I just show up and teach. We're lucky to have air conditioning, but somehow the hot days are torture even so. Since it's always rainy in the beginning of July, some people think our summer break should be mid-July - September instead of mid-June - August, but that's never gotten much steam.

There is research that year-round learning would eradicate the summer slump, but I'm concerned about the kids' and teachers' brains shutting down. By June, my kids are DONE. If longer mid-year breaks served to wake them up again, I'd be OK with it, but if not, I wouldn't. I'm not in the business to torture them, just to educate them.

Eventually, I agree with several of you . . . it should be what works best for the community.

Our Seattle-suburb school district starts Aug 29. Several years ago they went to a gradual re-introduction-to-school method, with the first week being 2 or 3 days, the second week (Labor Day week) 4 days, and the 3rd week the full 5. This was a plan I was familiar with when I worked in worker's compensation insurance. Reintroducing back-to-work gradually had better results after a long period off, and it seemed to work just as well with my kids. Fewer complaints at the beginning of the year, for sure, when they didn't have the 0 to 5 full days adjustment.

I've seen parts of the studies that say year-round school eliminates the 'summer slump', but what does it do to the kids?
The good students, don't they deserve a little break? The bad students, I fail to see how more of the same is going to improve things for them.
Then there's the third group: people like my father and sister, who were smart, but easily bored, and even if the class was interesting, did not like being constrained. Both of them dropped out early, and, eventually, did all right for themselves.
But, not having the escape valve of summer vacation would have just speeded up the process, and they would have started skipping class, or wandering off, a lot sooner.

As far as I can see, the two main objectives for year-round school are guaranteed free babysitting, and making school more like 'employment', easier from an administrative POV, and trains kids into the 'work' lifestyle, to be good little drones.

ElaineA said:

Several years ago they went to a gradual re-introduction-to-school method, with the first week being 2 or 3 days, the second week (Labor Day week) 4 days, and the 3rd week the full 5.

Click to expand...

Oh hey, neighbor! Yes, the year we did that, I thought it went well. My coworkers and community had a cow though, I think because of Labor Day weekend plans?

mccardey said:

27th of January down here. Four terms, with a two week holiday between each of the first three and a bit longer (5-6 weeks) at the end of the year. They move up a grade at the January start.

It's very sensible, but that's because we organised our summer to fit in.

Click to expand...

You and your four-week holidays for everyone.

The main thing that annoys me about having to go back in mid August is having to make the switch from my shorts and T-shirt summer mode back to long pants and blouses (with sleeves long enough to hide the twin hams that have been my upper arms since menopause) when it is still hotter that hell here. Yeah, it's air conditioned inside (though it breaks sometimes in our cranky old building--more commonly if we get an early heat wave in May and the HVC hasn't been used for a while), but walking around campus in 95+ heat is highly unpleasant.

There's no official dress code at the college where I teach, and jeans are fine (I doubt faculty would get in trouble for shorts, but there's a line most of us draw for professionalism), but it's just so hot here in August (and well into September), and I hate the feel of long pants after I've been wearing shorts for 3 months.