School Year May Get A Later Start

Most schools in the area start at the beginning of August.  Madison county schools start even earlier...on July 29th.  But Lawmakers are working to change that.  They want the first day of school to be August 21st or later.

Alabama lawmakers will propose a bill in the next session that will delay the opening of schools to later in the summer.  Some parents support this change.  They believe school starts too early in the summer.  Parent Teresa Wallace says "You can't plan vacations as well as when we were in school because we knew we had the whole summer  now it seems before summer is even over the kids are back in school too early."  Tiffany Draper says "It takes away from leisure time as far as with your family.  It's like a limited amount of time you can spend.  You don't really have a summer."

But with a later start to the school year fall breaks, Christmas vacation and spring breaks may get a little shorter. But parents say they could do without a long fall break.  "I kinda like the idea of getting rid of fall break.  Due to I have to make arrangements for my son due to baby sitters."  "When I was in school we didn't get 2 week fall break.  One week.  We just went to school and I'd rather go to school without any breaks than not have a summer."

The Legislators who support this bill say it would make it easier to comply with the No Child Left Behind law.  The law requires schools send out testing information 2 weeks before classes start.  With the earlier start date, this is hard to do since the information is usually not available until later in august.  

Lawmakers say another reason for a later start date is taking advantage of the summer tourism season.  They say that families could travel late in the summer creating more tax revenue for the state.