In Iowa the earliest start date is 8/23 because the State Fair will always be over by that date. Schools were starting to creep up into the Fair and kids had to choose whether to show or go to school. So we always start that day or the nearest weekday after. I’m happy with that as it’s not too early, but not too late and we get done before Memorial Day. DD’s birthday is the 26th, so she has a hard time looking forward to her birthday when it also means school is starting.
Looking at a few colleges’ academic calendars for 2019-2020, with the 26th falling on a Monday, there is a very good chance she will have her first day of college classes on her 18th birthday!
Good grief! Who really is making these decisions? We are a smallish, independent, urban district and we get surveyed ad nauseum about district decisions, however an informal chat with most parents seems to suggest most decisions are made before they even ask the question. Hmmmm… Surely, there is enough collective data out there to come up with more reasonable alternatives. I agree that they should just move back the state tests since very little happens in school after they are they are done testing.
@homerdog, are your high schools on a block schedule with semester classes like colleges have? Two of my kids have gone/go to a school like this. So they have four classes first semester then four second semester. However, finals have always been after Christmas break, even when they started school prior to Labor Day. There are some perks to this type of schedule but my dd’s Junior year, they barely managed to cover the curriculum in her AP classes due to numerous snow days and a very long Easter/spring break. They were cramming to get it all in before the AP test. That said, it’s a private school - the public schools, as well as most other private schools around here, have the normal year long courses. Younger ds goes to a different h.s. where his classes go all 9 months with midterms before Christmas break.
As twoinanddone pointed out, in MD where I live, the after Labor Day start date was mandated by executive order of our governor to ensure that our resorts had enough workers through what is considered the summer season. However, it was implemented immediately so no time for organizations that run summer camps to plan for the longer summer, leaving parents scrambling to figure out childcare for their kids. Many organizations and families rely on college students for staffing and childcare, and most leave for school part way through August. Since the original mandate, which also stated school must be out by June 15, there were some tweaks. This is only our second summer with the new later start date. It’s been verrrrry long for my 15 y/o whose last day of school was June 6th!
So my state has the fewest mandated contact hours of school for high school students in the country: 170 (yes, not 180—schools are open 180 days, but 10 of them are teachers-only!) days of at least 5 hours each. (My kids’ school district has longer days than that, but not by much.)
Given that there’s variation state to state and district to district, I have to wonder why there’s so much insistence that school must start by day X to have finals before winter break, or that schools must have equal-length semesters or even equal-length days throughout the year. The sort of people who go on and on about the need for experimentation in secondary education, maybe it isn’t stuff like charter schools they ought to be focusing on, but rather things like the structure of the academic year and academic day.
@4kids4us our school has two semesters. Year long classes (which are most classes) run for both semesters. So there’s a grade on the transcript from first semester and second semester. Each semester has a final. Some classes are just a semester and then they obviously have a final and then just one grade on the transcript for that class.
Kids take six classes every day (same schedule every day) and then lunch and PE (again every day).
Another problem that later high school graduation dates causes in Florida is that the summer sessions in UF and FSU start very early in the summer. One kid who graduated with my daughters on May 31 couldn’t go to the May session or the “A” session. She wanted to, she was in a big hurry to start college, but she had to wait until late June.
Here in NYC the public schools start the Wednesday after Labor Day and end the last Tuesday in June.
Then we have all the breaks in between: almost every holiday you can think of (Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, Columbus Day, Election Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving & the day after, winter recess, MLK, President’s day, midwinter recess, easter break, lunar new year, memorial day, Eid al-Fitr) and various “clerical days”.
There’s not really a such thing as snow days. It has to be either a major storm or a couple of feet or more of snow on the ground for them to close the schools. If they do close, it’s a lost day. They don’t shorten any of our breaks like some schools I’ve heard about in other states.
We are on a semester system at D19’s school so they have finals right before Christmas and then again the 2nd week of June.
We go back the week before Labor Day…Wednesday and Thursday and then Friday is a PD day (no school). No real instruction until after Labor Day, except in some classes with summer work where the first day is often a quiz or test.
@Acersaccharum Do you happen to be in Cobb County GA? (you can PM me if TMI). We are in Fulton County, and we start the 6th. Coming from the Northeast, it was an adjustment to have school start to Aug and end Memorial day, but now that I am used to it , it seems fine to me. Vacations in June are a bit nicer than vacations in Aug. As others have mentioned, the holiday break in December is a true end of semester break, so the kids are really off. We also tend to have a full two weeks or more around that time, while I noticed in the northeast, the kids only get maybe 10 days tops. (at least in NJ).
NJ is all over the board. My daughter starts after Labor Day, neighboring district starts August 22!
The biggest shocker to me, 15 years ago when we moved with a 4 year old and an infant, was that all the daycares and summer camps in this area shut down the last 2 weeks of August!!! I guess a “forced vacation” of sorts, but not great with a 2 parent working household! Luckily my husband made a career switch shortly thereafter and became a teacher so was home with the kids.
@sdl0625 GA - yes, Cobb - no, but they started the same schedule a year or two after we did. (I can’t figure out how to PM ;-)) The December Break is long, and relatively homework free, so that’s nice. Not a great time of year to travel though. A big part of our problem is that my girls year-round sports only take a break when school is already back in session, so they feel a lot of burnout at the beginning of the year. We can only really be free of both school and sport during Spring Break and 3-4 days around Christmas.
School starts here 20 August, but college classes start 27 August, so kids doing DE (except for the handful of DE first-semester composition classes taught in the high schools) have a weird first week.
School starts here 9/4. We then have days off on 9/10 and 9/19 for the Jewish holiday. First full week of school is not until 9/24. Talk about easing into the year. S23 starts at the same HS this year so we have that added stress.
I’m actually pleasantly surprised by how much D19 has gotten done so far this summer. She has filled out most of the Common App with the exception of activities (we will be tough to come up with much) and her essay. She claims to have a rough draft of the essay but have not seen it yet. She has also started on a few app for schools that don’t use the Common or Coalition App. She also reached out to her guidance counselor to try and schedule a meeting this summer and to give her her resume for the guidance counselor recommendation. Plus she is working part time at a summer camp from 8:30-12:30.
Of course I have told her that we are not going for the driver license test until everything on her summer list was completed. Funny how that seems to be working. She still needs about 20 more hours before she can take the test (MD requires you log 60 hours of drive time before taking the test). We are visiting Pitt next week, which is 4 hours each way. Hoping she can drive at least 2 hours each way, but it does not make for a relaxing ride. S23 has decided he is going to tag along on this trip since he has no camps scheduled.
@DCNatFan We enjoyed our visit to Pitt last fall - it was actually a lovely drive from the DC area and a lot of two-lane highway - it certainly will be less scary than taking her on I-95 or something.
Speaking of which, our remaining “to visit” list should probably include going up I-95 to Delaware and Rutgers. I’m still undecided on whether that’s happening in August or after school is back in session. I think there’s a random day off in mid-September.
I’m considering presenting a laptop with an open Coalition App to S19, who get up at noon, made a PBJ, practiced for a couple of hours, and is now in bed with the cat watching Netflix, where he will probably stay until he goes to a jazz combo rehearsal at 6:30.
I’m really hoping Coalition looks a lot like the Common App and he can just copy what he already did. His activities section still needs a little work (he has 7 or 8 separate music-related things, but I think it’s arranged in a way that makes sense). He doesn’t have the luxury of lumping it all together since he doesn’t do anything else!
Our school’s Naviance page has a lot of info about linking to the common app and doesn’t seem to acknowledge that Coalition exists, which I guess means it will be a pain to deal with when it comes time to coordinate everything?
I would be all for starting earlier in August if that meant we could have a full week in the fall. It would be helpful for college visits for sure! As it is this year, we start August 13th and only get a few single days off (Labor Day, Columbus Day, and Veteran’s Day) until Thanksgiving. We get a week off there; come back for 3 weeks; then finals.
Such a grind for those of us who have kids that haven’t even started apps, essays, etc. Dd19 is away for most of the summer either volunteering or doing a precollege program.
@TwinMom2023 there are literally hundreds of schools that might fit that category but very hard to say what might be considered “new”. If you can be more specific about what you are looking for, folks here can definitely offer suggestions.