Starting school before Labor Day a failing move
It’s too damn hot.
It’s too damn hot to work outside. It’s too damn hot to walk the dog. And it’s certainly too damn hot to make our kids sit in a sticky wooden desk in an un-airconditioned building — which is exactly what many Massachusetts school districts are doing right now.
Why? Because they’re stupid.
C’mon, folks — this is ridiculous. It’s hotter than Scott Lively at a gay pride parade and we’re loading down our kids with a 20-pound “PAW Patrol” backpack and sending them into a public school sweatbox?
The right day to start school — and I believe this is in the Bible — is the Tuesday after Labor Day. Just like the Good Lord intended. And a new Rasmussen poll finds that most Americans agree.
But not in Medford, Framingham, Lowell or dozens of other Massachusetts school districts, no, no, no. They had to start school this week, just in time for a South Carolina-style heat wave. The result?
Many have been forced to send kids home early due to the oppressive heat — leaving the poor parents to scramble for child care on short notice. A few districts like Holyoke simply bailed and canceled their first few days of school entirely.
Because some bureaucrats just couldn’t wait for Labor Day.
There’s no guarantee that the week after Labor Day won’t be miserably hot, too, of course. But the weather is just one of the many reasons starting school in August is a bad idea. Need another one? Money. Americans travel in the summer. Longer summer, more travel. More travel, more hard-working people in the travel and tourism business. This is so commonsensical you’d think even the Springfield school board could grasp it. A study by the University of Minnesota found that starting school after Labor Day increases the odds that families will take an overnight trip in the month of August or September by 50 percent. Tourism isn’t a big part of the Lawrence economy, I know, but on the Cape, and in downtown Boston and in New Hampshire’s Lakes region, it’s a big deal.
In Massachusetts, travel and tourism generates $1.2 billion in state and local taxes and supports 132,000 in-state jobs. In New Hampshire, it’s the secondlargest sector of the economy. No wonder Republican Gov. Chris Sununu yesterday launched a “Save Our Summer” initiative in reaction to the more than 50 percent of Granite State public schools now opening before the (unofficial) end of summer.
The summer haters argue that they need the early days because of evil standardized tests. “The focus on testing and expanding the school year to maximize test prep is really dehumanizing our students and their educational experience,” says Marianela Rivera of the Lawrence School Committee. And if that’s the motive, then these morons have failed math.
News flash: Our kids attend school 180 days. Period. If they start after Labor Day, before Independence Day or pull an all-nighter on Arbor Day — it’s 180 days. You want more educational days before the standardized tests? Then move the tests back. Or kill some of the bogus “Teacher Planning” days (what — you couldn’t “plan” over the summer?)
Some activists say they want kids back in school to feed, clothe and house them. They claim kids go hungry in the summer. Well here’s an idea: Let the older kids work. Work’s a great way to earn money, help with the bills and keep the local mini-golf open for family fun, for example. And according to Pew Research, the percentage of teens working summer jobs has fallen from just over half to around 35 percent. One reason: The summer’s so short they’re not worth hiring. If these bureaucrats cared about kids and their families, they would encourage work and accomplishment and wealth creation.
Instead they want kids in a government-run building, collecting government benefits and sitting in a sweltering classroom while some impossible-to-fire government worker drones on about gender-neutral pronoun acceptance.
And it’s definitely too damn hot for that.