The King/Queen of School Start Dates

Who is the king/queen of school start dates?  Who decides if we start before Labor Day?  It is the time of year I get constituent emails asking when school will start in August.  Or is it September?!  Schools around the country are wrestling with when to set school start dates.  Many are starting much earlier than Albemarle.

The king is Kings Dominion (the amusement park).  The queen is Mother Nature.  I think they both live in Richmond at the General Assembly. I am not making this up... Virginia has what we call the "Kings Dominion Law" named after the theme park outside Richmond, which requires schools to start AFTER Labor Day (the thinking is that way theme parks will not lose their workforce).

Each year Albemarle County has to pray for snow from Mother Nature and hope the King in Richmond will grant us a waiver to start school in August.  If we get enough snow days (averaged over a number of years), we are eligible for a waiver from this law.  During the past decade, I don't believe we have ever started after Labor Day because Albemarle has always successfully gotten a waiver.

There was a recent attempt (which failed) to kill the law by the General Assembly. An article in the Hampton Roads Daily Press reported:

"A law enacted nearly 20 years ago requires schools to open after Labor Day unless they get a waiver from the board. The statute was informally called the "Kings Dominion law" because it was championed by summertime tourist attractions that rely on teenage workers through Labor Day. According to the state Department of Education, 79 of the state's 132 school divisions had permission to start this academic year earlier, mostly to compensate for days missed because of bad weather."

This year, because we have not had enough snow days, staff are preparing two calendar drafts.  One that has us starting before Labor Day and one after.  If we don't get another couple days of snow, we may be forced to comply with Virginia law and start after Labor Day.  I can tell you the Wheeler Family is not making any vacation plans past August 20th. 

Comments

[Liz Rabin]

This is a silly law for counties so far away from Richmond. I can see how Richmond City and Henrico Co. schools may adjust their calendars to accomodate Kings Dominion, but I would never have my teenager grive 3 hours roundtrip to work at King's Dominion. I think Albemarle Co. should survey students to see if anyone actually works over there. If they don't, then why are we disrupting the schedule of several thousand people for a business that does not actually employ our young people?

[jn]

Another one for Nature is South East Virginia. Until labor day, we are riddled with tourists coming and going from our beaches as well as those going to the Outer Banks. With Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown right beside each other, we have a major problem with our local streets being clogged. My city has students who are bused from one end of town to the other due to federal mandate (we're one of the only cities still being told to do it) and with the "tourons" still on the road it adds an extra thirty minutes. These people drive ten to fifteen miles an hour in a 45 MPH zone. Locals have to give themselves an extra hour or more during tourist season just to get to work on time. If our schools opened before Labor Day, I would have kids sitting on a bus and waiting at a bus stop for almost two hours. It's bad enough that some are out at 5:30 AM at their bus stops when school doesn't even begin until 7:20; think about how bad it would be if they had to deal with tourist traffic on top of that. I wish there was a better way to deal with all of this since it's aggravating for everyone involved. I feel that the kids need more time in class before the AP exams in May as well as for SOLs. It would also get them better prepared for a college calendar since colleges begin in August. Perhaps the students could get out at the same time in June and just add an extra week of school in general ( I always liked being in school for more than 180 days).