School year calendars

[gonealookin]

...the school districts will be starting up the school year at the beginning of August. 

We never started until the week of Labor Day, I think usually the following Wednesday.

It's better for tourism-based economies if school starts later, but more basically, good grief, give the kids a decent summer break.

[Max Rockatansky]

...the school districts will be starting up the school year at the beginning of August. 

We never started until the week of Labor Day, I think usually the following Wednesday.

It's better for tourism-based economies if school starts later, but more basically, good grief, give the kids a decent summer break.

In Michigan we started after Labor Day also.  I'm gathering around Fresno that was never a thing as most of the schools go back in mid-August.  I guess that I can kind of see the angle of getting kids back in school at the hottest part of the year.  Still seems odd to me.

[Plutonic Panda]

School should start after Labor Day IMO. Just another part of our failed education system.

[Max Rockatansky]

The starting point is kind of arbitrary.  If anything the kids going back early draws a lot of traffic away from places like Yosemite Valley.  Who am I to complain about less people being present at some of my favorite places during prime summer months?

[Plutonic Panda]

The starting point is kind of arbitrary.  If anything the kids going back early draws a lot of traffic away from places like Yosemite Valley.  Who am I to complain about less people being present at some of my favorite places during prime summer months?

Not gonna complain about it, but I'm certainly also not gonna advocate for more people staying at home just so I can enjoy things to myself even as much as I love them. I had a blast during Covid regardless of what was going on. And I got a little spoiled by the lack of people out and about it was kind of annoying to do a road trip this year after having been not doing road trips for the last few years for personal reasons. But if people are out and they're really happy then I'm happy that other people can experience these beautiful places as well.

And I can't speak for other people, but I love kids and anything that makes them happy. I'm all for it. Just because I remember being a kid myself in road trips, especially but these things were really special to me. They inspired me. And I remember having a good and proper summer as well as winter and spring breaks were really important to me.

I think our education system needs to be better in a lot of ways, but one of them is not having it be so intensive. We don't need kids going super early to school and getting out late. We can have a better education system with better results.

[Max Rockatansky]

The starting point is kind of arbitrary.  If anything the kids going back early draws a lot of traffic away from places like Yosemite Valley.  Who am I to complain about less people being present at some of my favorite places during prime summer months?

Not gonna complain about it, but I'm certainly also not gonna advocate for more people staying at home just so I can enjoy things to myself even as much as I love them. I had a blast during Covid regardless of what was going on. And I got a little spoiled by the lack of people out and about it was kind of annoying to do a road trip this year after having been not doing road trips for the last few years for personal reasons. But if people are out and they're really happy then I'm happy that other people can experience these beautiful places as well.

And I can't speak for other people, but I love kids and anything that makes them happy. I'm all for it. Just because I remember being a kid myself in road trips, especially but these things were really special to me. They inspired me. And I remember having a good and proper summer as well as winter and spring breaks were really important to me.

I think our education system needs to be better in a lot of ways, but one of them is not having it be so intensive. We don't need kids going super early to school and getting out late. We can have a better education system with better results.

I can't really say that I have much of an opinion on the state of education.  Despite our best attempt my wife and I never had kids.  Perhaps I would feel differently if we did? 

Speaking for myself, I never really cared about school until I was flipping the bills for college tuition. 

[ZLoth]

As I can interpret from the local school district calendar, part of the reason for the early start is to allow the second quarter end before the spring break, and the school year ending by the end of the year. Some of the time offs include:

• Labor Day
• October 12-16 (between first and second quarters)
• November 3rd
• The entire Thanksgiving week
• December 21st-January 4th
• MLK
• February 15th-16th
• March 15th-19th (between third and fourth quarters)
• March 29th

[TheHighwayMan3561]

The starting point is kind of arbitrary.  If anything the kids going back early draws a lot of traffic away from places like Yosemite Valley.  Who am I to complain about less people being present at some of my favorite places during prime summer months?

Yeah, the MN tourism industry had a big hand in trying to discourage pre-Labor Day starts.

[Max Rockatansky]

The starting point is kind of arbitrary.  If anything the kids going back early draws a lot of traffic away from places like Yosemite Valley.  Who am I to complain about less people being present at some of my favorite places during prime summer months?

Yeah, the MN tourism industry had a big hand in trying to discourage pre-Labor Day starts.

Which is why I think it is odd here.  The tourism board in Madera County and Mariposa County put a bunch of effort into killing the Yosemite Reservation System.  You'd think they would want local people visiting them up through Labor Day also.

[vdeane]

As I can interpret from the local school district calendar, part of the reason for the early start is to allow the second quarter end before the spring break, and the school year ending by the end of the year. Some of the time offs include:

• Labor Day
• October 12-16 (between first and second quarters)
• November 3rd
• The entire Thanksgiving week
• December 21st-January 4th
• MLK
• February 15th-16th
• March 15th-19th (between third and fourth quarters)
• March 29th

Wow.  We never had a big fall break when I was in school, though we did get the Jewish holidays off.  Having the entire Thanksgiving week was unheard of - just getting the Wednesday of that week in addition to Thursday and Friday was a big event.  For Christmas, we would have had something more like December 23-January 1 (maybe even starting December 24!).  Our spring break was also in April.  I think it's interesting that you don't have Memorial Day on there; do schools end really early in the south?  In NY school runs through the end of June.  As much as the media might like to call Memorial Day the "start of summer", there's still a decent chance of somewhat chilly weather here (nothing like winter, but still enough to require long pants and a jacket).

[Scott5114]

I think it's interesting that you don't have Memorial Day on there; do schools end really early in the south?

In Oklahoma, the school year typically ends in mid-May and starts in mid-August.

[kphoger]

Wow.  We never had a big fall break when I was in school, though we did get the Jewish holidays off.  Having the entire Thanksgiving week was unheard of - just getting the Wednesday of that week in addition to Thursday and Friday was a big event.  For Christmas, we would have had something more like December 23-January 1 (maybe even starting December 24!).  Our spring break was also in April.  I think it's interesting that you don't have Memorial Day on there; do schools end really early in the south?  In NY school runs through the end of June.  As much as the media might like to call Memorial Day the "start of summer", there's still a decent chance of somewhat chilly weather here (nothing like winter, but still enough to require long pants and a jacket).

Here's the calendar for Wichita's public schools.

Note that there is both a full week off for Thanksgiving, and also that school ends before Memorial Day.

AUG 13 — first day of 1st semester
SEP 07 — off for Labor Day (+ SEP 08 — off for in-service)
OCT 15 — off for conferences (+ OCT 16 — off for Q1 grading)

NOV 03 — off for in-service
NOV 23 — off for conference release day, followed by fall recess
NOV 30 — first day back after fall recess
DEC 18 — off for non-teaching duty day, followed by winter recess (+ JAN 04 — off for in-service)

JAN 05 — first day of 2nd semester
JAN 18 — off for MLK Jr Day
FEB 15 — off for in-service
MAR 11 — off for conferences (+ MAR 12 — off for Q3 grading), followed by spring recess

MAR 22 — first day back after spring recess, first day of Q3
APR 16 — off for conference release day (+ APR 19 — off for in-service)
MAY 25 — last day of class

MAY 31 — Memorial Day

[1995hoo]

Wow.  We never had a big fall break when I was in school, though we did get the Jewish holidays off.  Having the entire Thanksgiving week was unheard of - just getting the Wednesday of that week in addition to Thursday and Friday was a big event.  For Christmas, we would have had something more like December 23-January 1 (maybe even starting December 24!).  Our spring break was also in April.  I think it's interesting that you don't have Memorial Day on there; do schools end really early in the south?  In NY school runs through the end of June.  As much as the media might like to call Memorial Day the "start of summer", there's still a decent chance of somewhat chilly weather here (nothing like winter, but still enough to require long pants and a jacket).

I grew up attending Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia. For most of those years, we started the day after Labor Day and ended around June 15-ish. There was a brief period when we began the Monday before Labor Day and ended about a week earlier (June 8-ish), but that only lasted a short time because in 1986, the Commonwealth enacted what was popularly known as the "Kings Dominion Law" (named after the amusement park of that name). It prohibited public schools from opening before Labor Day; the cited justification was that the tourist industry depended on the availability of teenage workers.

We didn't get a fall break, although we always had two teacher workdays in early November. There was one year when those didn't coincide with Election Day, but that proved disastrous because so many school cafeterias were used as polling places that it caused all sorts of problems to have kids attending school while adults were voting, so from then on the two teacher workdays were always Election Day and the day before. We never had any more than two days for Thanksgiving (the actual holiday and the day after). For Christmas, if it fell on Wednesday we would have all of Christmas week off and then have to go back to school on January 2. If Christmas fell on Thursday, the first day off was Christmas Eve and then we wouldn't have go to back until the Monday after New Year's. We had two teacher workdays at the end of January, always a Monday and Tuesday. Spring break was a week and normally fell either the week before or the week after Easter. Then we had Memorial Day. (When I was in kindergarten, we had so many snow days that they took away both spring break and Memorial Day to avoid having too many makeup days at the end of the school year.)

We did not have the Jewish high holy days off, although of course Jewish students didn't attend school on those days. I understand that has changed and that now there are all sorts of other religious observances they have off. The Kings Dominion Law, in turn, was repealed in 2019. Fairfax County schools now start two Mondays before Labor Day, but they have so many more holidays that they don't finish up any earlier in June—for the coming school year, the first day of school is August 21 and the last day is scheduled to be June 16. It looks like they get two days off for Labor Day weekend, one day for Rosh Hashanah (nothing for Yom Kippur this year because it's on a weekend), three days for Thanksgiving, two full weeks for Christmas, the week before Easter for spring break, and some sorts of holidays on March 10 and May 17 (no idea what those are), plus of course the federal holidays with the exception of Veterans Day (which they've never observed).

[kphoger]

We did not have the Jewish high holy days off, although of course Jewish students didn't attend school on those days.

I once had a teacher in college who had grown up in Kuwait.  She said that, as a Christian living in a predominantly Muslim country, she was allowed Sunday of every single week off from school as a religious holiday.

[formulanone]

I think it's interesting that you don't have Memorial Day on there; do schools end really early in the south?

In Oklahoma, the school year typically ends in mid-May and starts in mid-August.

In Alabama, the school year ends the week before Memorial Day (students' last day is a day or two before that Friday). The school year begins in the first full week of August.

They do get a week-long fall break around the first week in October; it's a great time of year to have a staycation...weather cools down in mornings and evenings, the humidity disappears, leaves start changing color.

There are also 1-2 days reserved in case of inclement weather. If unused, they apply to three-day weekends towards last few weeks of the school year, and the school employees use them as work days.

Nationwide, there are very few public school districts which observe the High Holy days. We did have them off when I went to school in Florida, though since they're 9 days apart, there's a good chance one of the two (Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur) falls on a weekend.

[1995hoo]

We did not have the Jewish high holy days off, although of course Jewish students didn't attend school on those days.

I once had a teacher in college who had grown up in Kuwait.  She said that, as a Christian living in a predominantly Muslim country, she was allowed Sunday of every single week off from school as a religious holiday.

That's pretty interesting, especially because it goes against so many of the stereotypes we read about.

[kphoger]

The school year going into June simply wouldn't work in the rural areas of Kansas.  Wheat harvest begins in early June in the southern part of the state and wraps up in early July in the northern part, and farm kids old enough to help with harvest are going to help with harvest.

I once had a classmate in northwestern Kansas whose family ran a custom cutting operation, and he would miss the first couple of weeks and the last couple of weeks every year, because his family's operation would start way down in south Texas and work their way up to Canada.

[Scott5114]

I once had a classmate in northwestern Kansas whose family ran a custom cutting operation, and he would miss the first couple of weeks and the last couple of weeks every year, because his family's operation would start way down in south Texas and work their way up to Canada.

I wonder what sort of arrangement his family had with the school to allow that. The official school policies at my school would have auto-failed anyone who missed that much school, not least because we had end-of-semester tests.

[formulanone]

I once had a classmate in northwestern Kansas whose family ran a custom cutting operation, and he would miss the first couple of weeks and the last couple of weeks every year, because his family's operation would start way down in south Texas and work their way up to Canada.

I wonder what sort of arrangement his family had with the school to allow that. The official school policies at my school would have auto-failed anyone who missed that much school, not least because we had end-of-semester tests.

Some school systems require a student only attends a certain percentage of days with good grades to pass. There was a child actor in my elementary school who missed something like 33% the time truant, and sometimes all but 1-or-2 days in a month, so some basic obligation was fulfilled (it was the 1980s). This does present all sorts of problems for some of the kids in my wife's school district who move around a lot, and wind up with less than half a school year, and demand to have them elevated to the next grade without any sort of proof of meaningful semester grades.

I don't really understand how that all works out for child actors and actresses, maybe the equivalent of homeschooling works out and that's that.

[Scott5114]

I once had a classmate in northwestern Kansas whose family ran a custom cutting operation, and he would miss the first couple of weeks and the last couple of weeks every year, because his family's operation would start way down in south Texas and work their way up to Canada.

I wonder what sort of arrangement his family had with the school to allow that. The official school policies at my school would have auto-failed anyone who missed that much school, not least because we had end-of-semester tests.

Some school systems require a student only attends a certain percentage of days with good grades to pass. There was a "child actor" in my elementary school who missed something like 33% the time truant, and had to be sent back for one-and-two-days in a month so that that obligation was fulfilled (it was the 1980s).

Meanwhile I seem to remember our policy was something like every six unexcused absences in a semester deducted 10 points from your grade. I didn't miss enough school to get a sense of how lenient they were in excusing absences. My parents taking me out of school on the Tuesday prior to Thanksgiving to make our trips to Kansas City a day longer were never excused, though I'm not sure whether that was just because my parents didn't bother to fight to have it excused.

[formulanone]

I once had a classmate in northwestern Kansas whose family ran a custom cutting operation, and he would miss the first couple of weeks and the last couple of weeks every year, because his family's operation would start way down in south Texas and work their way up to Canada.

I wonder what sort of arrangement his family had with the school to allow that. The official school policies at my school would have auto-failed anyone who missed that much school, not least because we had end-of-semester tests.

Some school systems require a student only attends a certain percentage of days with good grades to pass. There was a "child actor" in my elementary school who missed something like 33% the time truant, and had to be sent back for one-and-two-days in a month so that that obligation was fulfilled (it was the 1980s).

Meanwhile I seem to remember our policy was something like every six unexcused absences in a semester deducted 10 points from your grade. I didn't miss enough school to get a sense of how lenient they were in excusing absences. My parents taking me out of school on the Tuesday prior to Thanksgiving to make our trips to Kansas City a day longer were never excused, though I'm not sure whether that was just because my parents didn't bother to fight to have it excused.

I missed maybe 2-3 days a year (excluding the two weeks I had chicken pox); some of those were "wellness days" when we had a family visitor or two. My mother was a teacher, but she also knew the importance of feeling too good to go to work.

[hbelkins]

School in my rural Kentucky county, along with most others, used to start in mid-August and the final day was in mid-May.

Then came the winters of 1977, 1978, and 1979 -- my sophomore, junior, and senior years.For those first two years, we got out of school in December for Christmas break and didn't go back until the week of the district basketball tournaments, which was the first week of March. In 1979, we were actually able to get a few days of classes in sporadically in January and February in between snowstorms. The last day of school was pushed back to mid-May or even into June.

The reason was that there are so many school bus routes that run on gravel roads in the mountain counties, and gravel roads can only be plowed, not salted. The unsalted roads are unsafe for school buses.

Now, school begins the first week of August and still ends up running until the last week or so of May.


Along the same lines of my earlier gripes about the media's turning away from the use of the phrase "committed suicide," I'm likewise minorly aggrieved by the increasing use of the phrase "child sexual abuse material" instead of "child pornography."

[webny99]

The school year going into June simply wouldn't work in the rural areas of Kansas.  Wheat harvest begins in early June in the southern part of the state and wraps up in early July in the northern part, and farm kids old enough to help with harvest are going to help with harvest.

Yeah, this is the single biggest reason why summer vacation timing is different in the agriculture-heavy parts of the country than it is in the Northeast.

[ZLoth]

FYI: The dates I provide are for the Plano Independent School District... where a chunk of my property taxes go.

Having the entire Thanksgiving week was unheard of - just getting the Wednesday of that week in addition to Thursday and Friday was a big event.

Having grown up in the 1970s-1980s, I am well familiar with the Thanksgiving Thursday and Friday, although absenteeism was suspiciously higher on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

For Christmas, we would have had something more like December 23-January 1 (maybe even starting December 24!).

December 24th-25th falls on a Thursday-Friday this year.

Our spring break was also in April.

Easter falls on March 28th this year, although I think the school districts are trying to avoid the "religious overtones". I know that once the state of California declared Ceasar Chavez birthday to be a state holiday, the public community college and university that I attended promptly tied the spring break week to his birthday rather than to Easter to avoid losing instruction days.

I think it's interesting that you don't have Memorial Day on there; do schools end really early in the south?

The end of the school year is May 21st. Memorial Day falls on May 31st.

In NY school runs through the end of June.  As much as the media might like to call Memorial Day the "start of summer", there's still a decent chance of somewhat chilly weather here (nothing like winter, but still enough to require long pants and a jacket).

Again, when I went to school, it ended on the first week of June. Although New York probably has a high chance of inclement (bad) weather days.... upstate New York even more so. 

One thing that I'm very glad I didn't do is purchase a home near a public school. When the school day begins and ends, the neighborhood streets are clogged with parents trying to pick up their kids, and it is almost impossible to escape.

[Max Rockatansky]

Yeah, but a public school near your house will increase your property value.  When the Sanger West High School and Middle School got built across the street from me it increased our home value by about 15%.  I make my own hours so I can just avoid the school rush.