SOS (Save our Summer) petitioner to be on Knobe

1. I listened to the interview.

   She said the group who wants this changed has been trying to reach a compromise with the school district for the past five years. If the School Board and the Administration had been willing to push the start date forward one week, the petition drive would never have been launched.

   They have until May 9th to collect approximately 5,500 signatures. If they have the determination to stick with this issue for five years, my guess is, this will end up going to a vote.

2. How long will it be before they change the name to “Save Your Summer”?

3. Welcome back L3wis.

4. To help understand this issue, read today’s AL:

   Ellis: School board gets ahead in the calendar

5. South Dakota, America’s hot mess of direct democracy. Where anyone with a axe to grind or an itch to scratch can force nearly anything to a public vote by getting a handful of people to sign a piece of paper.

   Swimming pools, zoning decisions, abortion, medicinal marijuana, school calendars. What’s next? Voting on school lunch menus? Pat Lalley leading the charge to add bike lanes to every road, and bike passing lanes to the roads that already have bike lanes?

6. Since hornguy has left South Dakota, “America’s hot mess of direct democracy,” it would be interesting to know what progressive city and state he has relocated to!?

7. I live in downtown St. Paul. Shall I walk you to the bridge that the mayor lit up in rainbow colors to celebrate the legalization of gay marriage? Wanna trek the block to the new light rail station? Maybe catch some live theater that isn’t done by high school kids? Check something out at a university that isn’t a glorified high school with academics to boot?

   I have to pay state income tax now, but as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. said, “taxes are what we pay for civilized society.” And by that measure, South Dakota could use a bit more civilization. Nice people though. Sioux Falls has potential. I always believed that. I doubt that the present political leadership of the city and state will allow that to happen, but the potential is there.

8. If I had my way there would be school all year. Have a month off between Thanksgiving and Christmas, a month off around Easter, and a month off in the summer. Kids forget too much of what they learned during a school year when they have a three month summer vacation. Start school the day after Labor Day, like they used to, and get out right before Memorial Day, if they need the three month summer vacation. They have a lot of days off during the school year that are completely unnecessary. Easter Monday never used to be an off day, as far as that goes when I was in school we went on the morning of Good Friday too. Columbus Day, President’s Day, Labor Day are all kind of obsolete holidays now. Teacher’s in service work days are weird, go back to the three day SDEA convention and call it good. That takes two days off of the school year instead of the multiple in service days.

9. I read the Ellis article.

   I guess wait until his kids are in high school, the petitioners get their way and graduation is on Memorial Day weekend like is was for both of my sons. You basically go through the holiday weekend going to graduations of friend’s kids, doing your party, going to their party. Relatives giving up much of a three day weekend to participate in a life event for their relatives. And since you know many people from other years of school, it is not just the year your kid graduates.

   Mid May is a great time to graduate.

   Plus is not the main reason they want to start early is getting semester tests over before Christmas. Is that not more important than getting a couple of more weeks of summer in during August? Plan your vacation around school, don’t petition to plan school around your vacation.

10. But Joan – your idea is exactly how it works in California – you know – that place that if you live there a couple years and learn some stuff, the SD “natives” tell you, you should “go back to” with your crazy California ideas.

11. rufusx, I have heard that about the schools in California. From what I understand several European countries have school all year too. I had never thought about it until I was in college, getting my teacher’s training and one of the professors at General Beadle State Teacher’s College, in Madison, SD. He was also that same one that made me be against grading on the curve.

12. Exactly Joan – there is a bigger curve to the one that is the sample that your one classroom is.

13. Here’s my 2-cents. Nearly half of the students in the SF School District are classified as low income or below poverty. These children are not better served by delaying the start of school. Many of the students on free- and reduced-priced lunches have working parents, who must daily choose between food on the table or childcare. For those families, and let us not forget it is nearly half of the district’s students, it is better to have the kids in school, in a structured environment, which includes breakfast and lunch. Starting school after Labor Day just means three more weeks of nothing to do since the pools will still close early when the lifeguards go off to college. These kids are not sitting on the dock of their parents lakeside home dipping their toes in the cool lake water…although if asked, I bet their parents would say they’d love to give that kind of life to their kids. Wages being what they are in SF kind of limits that kind of life style.

14. So school now needs to start early to feed poor kids? What do they eat the rest of the summer? Trust me, I am being sarcastic and am concerned about free and reduced lunches, but that is an issue for the Federal government and city and state government providing better paying jobs and job training, low wages should not be the concern of our school district, but it seems they suffer the consequences.

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