Latecomers put pressure on already overloaded schools

DEIRDRE CONNER
Naples Daily News
9/7/2005

It happens every year.

Families arrive in Southwest Florida as summer draws to a steamy close. They rush to move furniture into new homes and find their way around an unfamiliar community over the holiday weekend. Figuring school starts after Labor Day — doesn't it everywhere? — they show up at local schools to register for the first day on Tuesday.

They would be wrong.

And every year, their reaction is the same: School started when?

As children throughout the northern United States savor the last days of summer, students in Florida have been in school for weeks.

Lee County, whose staggering and steady influx of new residents from out of state, is hit especially hard, said Leila Muvdi, director of student assignment.

She has delivered the bad news to hundreds of parents already this week — and every year — after they arrive at the Parent Information Center (PIC) in downtown Fort Myers: Yes, school started Aug. 8. Collier County Public Schools began Aug. 15.

"They look at us like we are out of our minds," Muvdi said. "They say, 'I can't believe you've been in school for a month!'"

Barbara Wagner left the PIC near tears after learning that school started here weeks ago instead of Tuesday as it did in her native Pittsburgh.

"It's crazy," she said. "I was like, 'Oh my!' They've missed three weeks of school."

Call it a Lee County phenomenon. With so many transplants from Northern states, miscommunications abound.

"Every year, we get a lot of parents on the week after Labor Day, especially the parents who are coming from up North," Muvdi said. "They just assume it's the same thing all over the country."

The School District's central Parent Information Center has been processing approximately 150 families every day since school began. On Tuesday, 87 of the 140 who came through the student assignment offices were new arrivals to Lee County, said Mike Smith, who tracks population projections for the district.

The Collier School District don't see a similar growth spurt after Labor Day, said district spokesman Joe Landon.

In October, however, Collier sees an enrollment spike as migrant agricultural workers arrive in the area and start sending their children to school, Landon said.

Over the last decade in Florida and other states, school start dates crept earlier with the increasing importance of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT), administered in March. The extra month to prepare makes a big difference, school administrators say. The high-stakes test determines everything from how much money a school gets to whether a student can be promoted to fourth grade or graduate from high school.

But parents say Florida's August heat is too taxing for children. One Miami-Dade mother has even launched a Web site, saveoursummers.org. In states such as Iowa and Wisconsin even have laws — largely advocated by the tourism industry — prohibiting school from starting before Sept. 1. North Carolina recently passed a law requiring schools to start no earlier than Aug. 25.

Jonathan, Andy and Oscar Ana are getting ready for the onslaught of book reports and algebra homework in Lehigh Acres instead of New York City. But their friends back in the Bronx don't return to class until Thursday.

"It's good, because we get out early," Oscar said.

The family moved here even though their father, Rafael Ana, does not yet have a job. While many people are coming to Southwest Florida for better employment opportunities, Muvdi said it's sometimes just a whim.

"Every year it's the same. It surprises me how people move at the last minute. A lot of people just show up," she said.

"You know what surprises me most? Some people come in and say, 'I came here for the weekend and decided to stay.' We get people who do that every year."