Climate Change? Nahhh ...

One other risk you run down here is that August is a prime hurricane month.

 

I mean, you're still gonna be running it full blast in September and even part of October, anymore.

Some 20 odd years ago, North Carolina started to see the same school year creep toward early August. All the beach towns panicked. They formed a lobbying group and a campaign called "Save our Summer" to convince the General Assembly to prohibit the school year from starting before the last week of August. Sure enough it worked. Almost every public school in the state starts the week before Labor Day. There's been some creep again, though, as some of the mountain counties went ahead and started earlier and there were no consequences. I expect we'll see another round of "Save our Summer" soon, if it keeps spreading.

 

Ok, but why then add August to the bill? Late May-early June is at least some relief. We aren’t getting our first truly oppressive, people-gonna-die heat wave until this weekend.

 

I mean you're not wrong, but we do get those hot weeks earlier in the spring and later in the fall than we used to. My kid was still in school last week (Friday was the last day) with temps in the 90s much of the week. Thankfully the humidity isn't through the roof yet, but still. The ancient HVAC at his 71 year old school was working overtime last week.

 

Having only attended school during the old September-June period, I'm guessing that the hot weather bothered me a lot less in late May-early June when all our thoughts were on summer vacation and coasting through the last couple of weeks than it would starting the nine-month slot in mid-August.

 

When I was a kid, we always started back the last full week of August. Kids had to help cut tobacco. We still got out by Memorial Day.

Now, school starts by Aug 1. We still get out by Memorial Day, but there isn’t a month where there isn’t some sort of break, even if it’s just a Friday or Monday.

 

At the beginning of 2020, before the world turned upside down, somebody with the Huntsville school system leaked a proposed calendar from the state that would satisfy the tourism industry’s wish to have no school from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

And because of the number of instructional days now required, it would have been a death march for student and teacher alike. Only two days off first semester were Veterans Day and Thanksgiving (no Black Friday) with the last day of class December 23. Second semester was Jan. 4 to May 28. No holidays, no spring break.

You’ll not be surprised to learn it was quickly shouted down.

 

That's ducky, but when schools in other states start earlier the same problem arises.

 

This is where I really agree with Biden's Green Energy/Infrastructure bill. Public buildings need better windows and insulation and modern, higher efficiency HVAC systems. Lots of front end costs but a more comfortable and energy efficient system on the back end, which should last for decades.

 

When I was in middle school in the late 80s, our particular school was the last in the county without AC.

There was a weather station in the yard, and ohhhhhhh man the excitement we had when a teacher was checking that box. Once or twice a school year, we'd get sent home early.

Glorious!

 

His school has been slated for a major renovation - to the tune of $25 million - for about 10 years now and it would include improvements for energy efficiency and HVAC replacement. It's been on the list for both of the last two bond packages that went before local voters, but the first time it was on the bottom of the list and the second time it was in the middle. This last one passed in 2020. Soon after it passed, construction costs for replacement of a 100-year-old high school ballooned and swallowed up almost the entire bond. I'm sure we'll go to the top of the list when they do a bond next year and by the time it's actually done, my kid will probably be in middle school. He just finished 1st grade.

It's frustrating because the General Assembly is supposed to provide a significant percentage of school construction money under our funding formula. The legislature's been sitting on billions of surplus funds that should be going back into infrastructure - and school construction money would be beneficial in a lot of communities. But we're in the midst of efforts to shift school funding to charter schools, so it ain't happening. School boards don't have the ability to levy property taxes here the way they do in just about every other state I've lived in, so we rely on the county passing periodic bonds for major renovation/maintenance. It's incredibly inefficient.

 

This is basically Alabama. The 1901 State Constitution was designed to enshrine two things, Jim Crow laws and low state property taxes. If this state were to tax at a rate that is 2/3 down the list of state rates, they'd be rolling in dough. Everything runs off of fees and sales taxes and state income tax. So much nonsense in the state lege every year.

That stable, solid floor of income provided to the lege by property taxes in most states? We don't have it.