<< Back 8/7/02 The bell tolls for thee — earlier and earlier SMN For those of us with school-aged kids, the blessed yet hectic routine begins now. “It’s a school night. Get to bed early, get the book bag ready, get a bath, pack lunches. Time to get up. Hurry and eat, get your shoes on, get to the bus stop, get in the car, go, go, go.” It’s the first week of August, and the bell is tolling the end of summer for students, teachers, administrators and parents throughout Western North Carolina. The question many of us are asking, though, is why the bell seems to be tolling earlier and earlier each year? Do a little reading on the subject, and you find that the entire school calendar — and even the traditional 8 a.m.-3 p.m. school day — is not at all sacred anymore. Across the nation, the routine is undergoing dramatic changes. Most of us with children remember the September start date for school. Even singles in their 20s, those who haven’t even thought yet about having children, seem shocked when they discover that many schools systems are starting school the first week of August, that the summer vacation may soon become a thing of the past. The slow creep of the school year into summer has been occurring for some time, and evidence seems to be mounting that the traditional September start date will soon go the way of the history books and nostalgia. An article in the journal Education Week says that in 1988 about 51 percent of the nation’s public schools opened their doors before Labor Day. By 2000, that figure had gone up to 76 percent. The reasons for the earlier date are multi-faceted. One big factor that most of us are familiar with has to do with our changing culture. We are no longer an agrarian country where families and children are needed in summers to work the farm. Both my parents did farm work in the summer. When I was in my early teens, the only job available during the blistering eastern North Carolina summers was priming tobacco for a farmer who would pick a crowd of suburban kids up in the morning, drive us to his country farm one county over, and bring us home in the evening. Today, fewer and fewer people can even identify the crops in nearby fields, much less know when it’s time to harvest. Another factor in the South and West, of course, is air conditioning. Before the widespread convenience of that omnipresent appliance, starting school the first week of August would have been simply unbearable for teachers and students. Now, school districts can schedule programs for remediation and other special needs all summer long. The continued push for higher-achieving students, though, is probably the most important reason for the disappearing summer. As politicians and administrators search for ways to bolster test scores, the school calendar looms as a malleable variable that can be shaped and stretched to fit a particular district’s needs. The federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 will require more testing and more accountability. In New York City last year, former Mayor Rudolph Guiliani suggested that Saturday classes were even a good idea. The ambitious governor of California, Gray Davis, has argued that adding 30 instructional days for middle school students would be a good idea. In this state, school systems must adopt a calendar of 220 days, of which at least 180 must be instructional. As the date for starting school moves into summer, several districts around the country are also changing the time when school starts each day. The trend in some areas, it seems, is a later starting time. The move is based on new research that says teens need more sleep — at least nine hours per day — than pre-pubescent students and adults. The first act on this research was Minnesota. In 1994 the Minnesota Medical Association sent a letter to all the state’s schools recommending a later starting time for middle and high schools. A bill ordering districts to do so was considered in the state legislature but eventually failed. Still, several districts changed their start times, including Minneapolis. Schools, beginning in 1998, instituted three options for starting school — 7:45 a.m., 8:40 a.m., or 9:40 a.m. Research on its effects are still anecdotal, but some say students are more alert and attendance is slightly better. But all is not lost to longer school years and changing school days. In South Carolina, that bastion of progressive tradition, the state is considering a possible later date for starting school. A state panel, at the request of lawmakers from Myrtle Beach and other coastal areas, has been asked to move the start date back to Labor Day. Tourism drops off sharply in mid-August, which negatively affects tax revenues and therefore hurts schools, they say. The businesses who depend on student labor think that the early school start dates are part of the reason the tourist season takes a nose dive in August. But there is little chance those coastal lawmakers will win their battle. The trend is to start earlier in the year and, perhaps, tweak the school day, all in an effort to shape the school calendar so that students will do better in school. The end, in this case, is justifying the means. And it doesn’t appear that there is any way to turn back the clock or the calendar. (Scott McLeod can be reached at info@smokymountainnews.com)