As the new legislative session gets underway in states across the country, "Save our Summers" and similarly-titled organizations nationwide will begin anew the battle to prevent the school year creeping towards the beginning of August. In most states, those efforts will be supported by tourism industry councils and championed by the Hotel & Motel Association, the Restaurant Association, and various retail associations.
Compelling arguments exist on both sides of the debate. On the side of extending school beginning and ending dates: the pressures of the No Child Left Behind law, the struggle (particularly in years such as this one) to find space for make-up days because of snow and other issues that cause cancellation, and the timing of exams. Generally, though, states keep the same instructional guidelines of 180 days or 1,000 hours of instruction. Other issues are scheduling vagaries that can be resolved by creating exceptions (districts in North Carolina, for example, may apply for a waiver based on the number of snow/cancellation days in the previous year) to the firm dates set by law.
Groups in favor of preventing school creeping too far into August on one side and June on the other speak typically of families' need to spend summer vacations together and the value of experiences such as summer camp. The North Carolina Save Our Summers lists a variety of reasons why summer vacation is valuable to children and parents alike here.
Conspicuously absent from that list is the economic impact of shortening summer break. While most of the states with active Save Our Summers organizations are more traditional tourism-heavy states such as Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia, states such as Kentucky, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and others have also heavily invested in the campaign to return to a more "traditional" school year. Kentucky, Alabama, South Carolina, and Texas commissioned independent studies to determine how much the state economy was impacted by early August school start dates, and the results ($187 million, $260 million, $180 million, and $332 million respectively) are striking--especially when one considers that each of those studies was conducted over 5 years ago.
Shortening the summer makes parents and children pare down the activities they can participate in because of time restraints, and that means that some portion of the economy is bound to lose. Whether families cut out summer camps, family reunions, or family vacations, the economic impact is huge--and most of that impact cannot be rescheduled and recouped in other months.
The tourism and travel industry has the most to lose with shortened summers, to be sure, but not because of "cheap labor," as the Asheville Citizen-Times so delicately alleged. Truncated summers means less travel, less consumer spending, less tax dollars generated for the states (and perhaps increased taxes to make up for that shortfall--South Carolina estimated a shortened school year would lead to $8.3 million in lost tax income).
Support your state-level Save Our Summers organization (find a short list here, or Google your state and "save our summers"); there is a lot more riding on this than you may realize.
Are you a parent, hotelier, or restauranteur? What do you think of these developments? Let us know at hgimayfaire@gmail.com!
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