School buses have just started rolling around the region. If this seems a little late to you, blame the calendar.
Labor Day, defined as the first Monday in September, lands on the 7th this year, which is the latest it can be. Since most schools start the year around Labor Day, that means they are getting going as late as possible, too.
Which is either good or bad. Or maybe it’s both.
“You know, it’s one of those mixed feelings in the sense of yeah, you’d like another week of summer, but at the same time you buy time on the other end. You get to start your summer earlier,” said Paul Hoiriis, interim principal at Merrimack Valley, as he greeted students arriving for their first day on Thursday morning.
Most schools in the region started on Thursday or Friday, although some high schools start early next week.
The question of whether to start school before or after Labor Day can be surprisingly heated. State lawmakers this year debated a bill (Senate Bill 403) that would require all public schools to start after Labor Day, arguing that it would boost local businesses by keeping people in summertime-spending mode for longer. It was shelved after concerns were raised about coordinating with related schedules such as advanced-placement tests.
The debate over school starts resembles the debate over daylight saving, which pits people who want more daylight early in the day against those who want more daylight late in the day. School years by law in New Hampshire must be at least 180 days long, so opinions on Labor Day school come down to whether you want more summer vacation early in the year or more summer vacation late in the year.
Decades ago, most schools started after Labor Day. The schedules have shifted earlier for a variety of reasons, including getting in more instruction before SAT tests, wanting to finish the first semester before Christmas break and coordinating regional athletic schedules.
Nationally, there’s a rough north-south split, according to data from Weareteachers.com, an education website. Most states in the Southeast and Southwest mandate school starting as early as mid-August, whereas states in the Northeast, upper Midwest and Pacific Northwest start later, sometimes well into September.
This sounds backwards from a weather point of view, since Southern schools should want to avoid the heat of late August. However, most of them have air conditioning, something that is historically less common in northern schools.
Hoiriis, who was formerly principal at Newfound Regional High School in Bristol, was hired as interim principal at MV after Shaun St. Onge announced he would not return. In his career, he has worked at schools that started both before and after Labor Day.
“Sometimes it kind of swings with whatever the cultural tide is,” he noted.
