since my cousin told my aunt (the grandma) who watches him after school that my nephew who is starting first grade this year is going back to school on august 8th …
I think that’s way too early I mean last year they went back on the 28th …
For one reason here in the antelope valley its still between 90-112 degrees every day even the local fair knows better than to start that early in the month and half of the schools still dont have air conditioning
another is the stores aren’t even starting the school sales until the 15th
and from what ive read summer is starting at the same time next year so there losing a month of summer …
But the earliest ive ever started school was like the 18th of august but we got out may 20th and that was in rural Indiana
anyones elses grade school year start that early ?
Sometimes it does by us, but usually more like the eleventh.
It’s a unit district, they want the first semester done by Christmas, and they want the semesters equal length. They need to start early in August to do this, since they now give the week of Thanksgiving off and a couple of holidays also in the first semester.
Some people grumble, but if they have kids in high school they’re happy the kids don’t have to study for exams or do homework over the Christmas break.
My schools always started the day after Labor Day.
My wife teaches second grade–her first day of school this year will be August 1, with the students beginning on August 3.
Many school systems are going to what’s called the “balanced calendar.” It’s the same number of school days, but spread out in a different way. So summer break is essentially only two months long. School begins early in August. But there are longer breaks during the year–two weeks off in the fall (October 10-21), three days at Thanksgiving, two weeks off at Christmas (December 23-January 6), and two weeks for spring break (March 20-31). The school year ends on June 2.
The theory behind it is largely that by giving the kids a shorter break for the summer, they will retain more when they come back for the new school year. It’s not perfect–they really ought to finagle things so the year ends with Memorial Day, rather than expecting the kids to come back for a few odd days of June after the long weekend. But for the most part, we find it rather pleasant. Certainly it gives us more time for things like family trips during those long spring and fall breaks, and my wife is usually ready to get back to school long before summer is over. I would say that on the whole we’re in favor of the balanced calendar.
I hated my long summer breaks in college. We got out in April and came back in September. I would have rather worked through the year and graduated a year earlier.
I’m interested to know where kids go back to school in Aug. as its unheard of where I live. (Okay, very occasionally it’s the very last day of August!)
It’s part of a slow movement toward year round school (with several multi week breaks at Thanksgiving, Christmas, Spring Break, etc.) instead of a long summer break. I’m not sure where I stand on the year round school issue, but this “balanced calendar” seems to be the worst of both worlds. Go one way or the other, for heaven’s sake!
Unless you went to a really odd college that did not offer summer classes and you had no access to online courses, you had that option.
There probably aren’t even many college graduates alive today, outside of nursing homes, who went to college before online classes were available.
Actually I graduated early because I always took summer classes and it was a great decision. Online classes made it possible to even do an internship over the summer and take classes.
Even as a kid, I think I would have prefered something like this. Obviously, I loved summer, but things did start to get bland after 2 1/2 months off, and then having so few breaks the rest of the year, so it was jarring going back to school and then got exhausting the rest of the year. I also know that retention sucks, and though I had some teachers that would give assignments over the summer, like read a book and have a report ready the first week or do some math problems to keep them fresh and let the teacher see where your skills are, it seems like it would just be better to have shorter, more frequent breaks.
Another advantage seems, to me, that it’s good for families too. Parents can, if so inclined, spend more time with their kids or take vacations throughout the year rather than trying to cram it all in the summer. Even as someone without kids, I feel the squeeze from this because my coworkers with kids end up having to try to figure out how to get their trips in during summer and around Christmas and it either leaves us twiddling our thumbs with nothing to do, or overwhelmed because we’re so shorthanded. So, hell, I think there’s even benefits to society as a whole, not just to kids and their educations.
That’s hyperbole at best. Let’s say online classes were first available in 1992, (and that’s already being generous with the definition,) and your typical college grad is in their early twenties. That means a graduate from the pre-online days is in their late 40s now; getting on, yes, but not “There aren’t many around outside of nursing homes” kind of age.
Just to add a quick note to this. Maybe it was obvious, but even though I said “many school systems,” the specific dates that I mentioned here are for the system my wife teaches in (which is Anderson, Indiana). Other school systems will have their own dates for beginning, ending, and breaks, but the basic idea of the balanced calendar is the same.
My college starts classes August 22nd and releases in early May.
The local high schools start after Labor Day and ended June 17th.
Seniors who just graduated get two whole months off before the head to college. When I mentioned that to some recent graduates they just moaned. Nice coordination of calendars there!
Um, I’m 62, having graduated from college in 1979, and I’m not only not in a nursing home - I’m still working. I’m pretty sure I’m not that much of an anomaly.
We tried the year around thing for grade school and jr high and in typical av fashion they screwed it up spectacularly and they had to go back to the normal year somewhat when is when they started switching it around
in fact the second year of hs for me they were going to go to it and then over the summer they found out that because of an accounting error theyed been spending money they didn’t have to get ready for it and was 65 mil in the hole and by the time they could retry it at a reasonable amount the fad had passed
nostalgia hijack
heh when I was her the first time your daughter (you even had a trade mark fir her lol) had just went through the prom drama(which was funny as heck) and was a couple of days near graduation and you and hubby were going to florida for a bit because he had a job offer there
Being from the Southern Hemisphere the calendar comparison is problematic but my initial reaction was that seems like a very long break.
So I took the number of days from the solstice to try and give some sort of comparison.
USA summer solstice 21st June -to school return 8th August 216 = 48 days
Aus summer solstice 21st December to school return 28th January 2016 = 38 days
We’ve always sent Sophia to various academic camps, so this isn’t really an issue with us, and now that she is old enough to volunteer and work for $, the age of academic camps may be over. However, she loved her Creative Writing course at UTSA a couple of weeks ago and wants to do it again.
This year she starts high school on August 15th, some years she has started earlier.
Nope. Not too early at all. In fact, I go back on the 8th. The kids don’t start until the 11th, but the faculty all report that Monday. That gives us a solid 2 month Summer Break, a week at Thanksgiving, 2 weeks at Christmas, 2 weeks in the Spring and assorted holidays. We graduate June 7th next year. I’m just south of the OP, and I love the schedule.
Our son’s school (Middle/High School on a combined campus) used this sort of schedule. He started school the first Monday in August, and got a 2 week break after each quarter (and the entire week of Thanksgiving). School ended the first part of June, so Summer Break worked out to 8 weeks.
We loved the system. The Fall Break was great for going on family vacations when the weather was still nice wherever we were going, but the crowds were nonexistent; Spring Break was often the same, as it usually didn’t coincide with Easter. The 8 week Summer Break was enough to give him a ‘break’, but ended before boredom really set in, and no matter what time of year it was, there was never more than 8 weeks until the next break.
