Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for July 29, 2005 IT COULD BE WORSE

Starting to think about August 15th...or August 8th...

School start dates push into July, despite protest

By BRIDGET GUTIERREZ
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Not even a Lil' Bratz backpack, featuring cartoon drawings of the wildly popular fashion dolls, or a new pair of mary-kateandashley jeans could make Dakota Pirtle want to go to school today.

Just last week, Dakota was bobbing for apples, competing in feed-sack races and riding horses at summer camp. Asked to contemplate a return to teachers, books and air-conditioned classrooms, Dakota, 10, stared at her apple.

"Oh God, please say no," she gasped.

Believe it or not, school is now in session for the Covington girl and thousands of other metro Atlanta students, who had just two months of summer vacation before being called back to classes.

"I don't even want to hear about school," said Dakota, who's entering fifth-grade at Middle Ridge Elementary in Newton County.

But shorter summers are nothing new. School start dates have been encroaching on summer vacations for at least a decade. Five years ago, only four school systems in Georgia still opened in September, once considered the traditional start to the academic year. This year, all of the state's public schools will be in session by Aug. 15.

"I think it's atrocious," said Lane Holt, a Cobb County mother who helped found Georgians Need Summers, a group lobbying for later start dates.

"It's not even the first of August," Holt said. "Technically, according to the calendar, summer has only been underway for a month, and our children are going back to school."

Social Circle and the Newton and Walton county school systems all opened this week; nine other metro counties start Monday. By next Friday — the end of the first week of August — more than half of metro Atlanta systems will have begun the fall semester.

"I keep having to say to myself: July 29. OK, it's almost August," Covington mom Leslee Worley said of Newton's first day. "But really August 1st would have sounded better."

Parent protest forms

While educators have embraced the trend toward earlier start dates, a backlash may be forming.

Recently, when Henry County Superintendent Jack Parish proposed starting on July 31 next year, he heard overwhelming opposition — despite the fact that the system now starts Aug. 1.

Parish wasn't the first to consider opening schools in July. In addition to Social Circle, Newton and Walton, 19 other systems around the state started classes this month. But after receiving so many negative responses, Parish rethought his stance.

"There was something about that — pushing into that July date — that caused a psychological change," he said. "Even though they're only a day apart."

When Georgians Need Summers formed nearly two years ago to fight Cobb's earlier starting date, the group had 25 supporters. Today, founders claim 1,000 members from almost every county in the state.

Holt, one of the co-founders, said she'll push for legislation to move starting dates to late August next year, and she's looking to enlist like-minded candidates to run for area school boards.

"I do talk to people who think [the early start] is a good idea," Holt said. "But for every 10 people I talk to ... there's nine who don't."

Year-round compromise

Brandi Moore, 10, was thrilled to be in class Monday, even though she just finished fourth grade at Parklane Elementary in East Point last month.

Before 7:30 a.m., Brandi already had picked her new desk in Janis Rone's fifth-grade classroom — center row, second from the front.

"It's gonna be fun learning things in fifth grade," Brandi said.

Parklane is among a handful of metro Atlanta elementary schools that operate on a year-round schedule, which generally runs from July to May. Parklane pupils, who ended the school year June 3, had exactly seven weeks of summer vacation, one of the shortest in metro Atlanta.

"We love summer," Principal Lee Adams said. "But after four or five weeks off, you start running out of things to do."

Brandi and her peers, like most schoolchildren, will go to class at least 180 days this year. But the academic year at Parklane and at a growing number of metro systems now covers 10 months because of added vacation days, including fall break in October and mid-winter break in February.

Those extra breaks mean the earliest-starting systems will end May 26, exactly the same day as those that open the latest.

'Wanted to go back'

Educators say the added time off lessens teacher burnout, cuts down on discipline problems and allows high school classes to end before winter break. It also places a burden on working parents, who have to scramble to find day-care at odd times of the year and shortens the high season for kid-centered businesses, such as amusement parks and overnight camps.

"Those folks who live in counties where they attract tourists, I think it cuts in on the dollars a little bit," said Newton Superintendent E. Wendell Clamp. "But our primary business is to provide educational opportunities for children."

After attending 4-H and wildlife camps this summer, Cammy Moody was ready to start seventh grade at Newton's Indian Creek Middle School.

As she prepared a fishing line last week at a pond outside Covington, Cammy, 12, admitted she had grown tired of feeding the cows and picking up litter at the family farm in nearby Newborn.

"The very first week we were out of school, I wanted to go back so bad," Cammy said. "I wish they would start earlier."