We haven't seen this in print yet, but I hear we will start the day after Labor Day. There was a push in our state to mandate that for tourism's sake, but the compromise was to require a mandetory 4-day Labor Day weekend. So, even when we started in late August, our kids had a long weekend almost immediately. Nuts!
We get a couple of days off in the fall for the Jewish holidays, plus the standard Thanksgiving holiday. Rumor says we'll only have one week at Christmas. We also get a full week off in February, plus another around Easter for spring break. With all that time off, I'm afraid to see how late in June we're going in 2006. I hadn't thought about JHB's point. Something I'll be looking at in detail when our calendar is finally published.
Originally posted by JHB: Texas is considering legislation that will move the start date of school to after Labor Day and have it end by June 7th. Currently, I think the first possible day is August 18th, but schools can get a waiver. More than 50% do and start about a week earlier than that. And there must be at least 180 school days. Most schools end the 3rd or 4th week of May. (May 25 for us this year.)
Primarily it's the tourism industry lobbying for the change. But there are also claims that shifting the year by 2-3 weeks will save millions in utility costs. (Sorry, but I don't believe that.)
My big problem with this idea is that it makes it virtually impossible to end the semester at winter break. Instead the kids will go home for a couple of weeks, then come back and a week or two later face mid-terms. It also puts mid-year graduates out of sync with the college semesters.
I know some of you have schedules like this. (In fact, I did when I was a kid. Coming back from Christmas break to face exams was the pits!)
What do you think? What are your schedules? (Start date, end date, # of days) I'd appreciate a discussion on this.
See it was like that when I was in high school & I hated it. We would actually start the Thursday after Labor Day. I hated coming back from Christmas break & having to study for finals. I like the kids starting the 2nd week in August & then getting a day off 2 wks later. They are still adjusting to being back in school & need that day off, IMHO. We were just talking about this at the school yesterday and no one is in favor of it.
We start the day after Labor Day, and this year will end on June 24 to get in our mandated 180 days. In a wacky twist for this year, we get a four day weekend coming up the first weekend in June--they get June 3 and June 6 off. This caused many a parent to take a good look at the school schedules, and there is a movement underway to start school earlier in the year, but it requires state legislation. Don't know if we'll get an earlier school year start, but we sure won't have any 4 day weekends in the last few weeks of school anymore! I'm so used to starting the day after Labor Day that I find it hard to imagine doing anything differently.
In our school district we are on a "modified traditional" schedule. I love it!!! Our school year starts the last week of July, and ends around the 1st week in June. It's K - 6th, and school is in session Monday - Thursday's 7:35 - 2:00 (including kinders) and Fridays 7:35 - 12:00. About every 9 weeks we get a 2 week break (Fall break the last week in Sept & 1st week in Oct, Christmas/Winter Break is 3 weeks, and Spring Break the last 2 weeks of March). Inbetween we have quite a few 3 day weekends. Yes, our summer is only about 6 weeks, but it is long enough for everyone to get a "break" or go on a trip, but not too long for the children to get bored. Compared to the schedule I had growing up..... starting the day after Labor Day and ending the second week in June with only a winter and spring break, it's really nice.
[ 05-22-2005, 01:07 PM: Message edited by: Angela Barry ]
Here in Southern California we start the day after Labor Day and continue until the second week in June (depending on how the holidays have fallen). The other district in our area starts a week before we do and gets out about the same time we do but they get more vacation. In the past we have gotten two days at Thanksgiving, two weeks at Christmas and one week in the spring. I think we get one teacher day off the whole year but we have a short day every Thursday so they do their in-service then. This year we will be getting a week off at Thanksgiving so we will be going even later. I like the later start but hate going so long into summer. Parts of our school don't have air conditioning and we live in a hot part of the county - so the last few weeks are miserable for the kids.
