Small Town News

Lets start school when the weather is cool

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Sitting in a hot gym on a Thursday night-presented a great argument for delaying the start of school in North Dakota until after Labor Day.

Some area schools kicked off the year on August 17. three weeks before the ceremonial end to summer.

Ironically, those three weeks were arguably the best three of the entire summer. Last week especially shined through with temperatures at 80 degrees or above.

As I stood in the Rolette gym snapping pictures of a volleyball game, I kept asking myself why, why, why are we here so early.

It was a near-perfect summer evening. We all should be outside enjoying the sunset and bright moon. We should be visiting our neighbors on the porch, on a bike ride around town, oh a golf course putting for par or fishing at the lake.

Instead, we're baking in a gym, not to downplay what was a pretty good match between the Comets and Woodchucks.

On Thursday, I spent four hours inside watching a combination of grade school and high school sports. Outside it was perfect.

The situation continued to bother the next day, probably because the weather outside was - you guessed it - perfect. It was so nice that The Star's business manager took the afternoon off.

That sealed it. I had to find out what was going on. I set my sights high and went straight to the boss. Dr. Wayne G. Sanstead, superintendent of the N.D. Department of Public Instruction (DPI).

I called his office and he wasn't in. I guess it was just too nice to be working in his office on Friday.

I did talk to a very nice woman in the department's accreditation office but it was clear she wasn't comfortable talking to the press. She was probably the only one left in the office besides the receptionist because everyone else thought it was too nice outside to work.

All she would say is that it's completely up to each individual school district as to when school starts. All the schools have to do is get 173 days of instruction in and the institutions can't go past June 30.

Knowing I wasn't going to reach anyone else in Bismarck on a Friday, I called the place where I know everyone was working - our local school district.

I reached Brian Palmer, superintendent of Mount Pleasant Schools, on his cell phone. He was on the seventh hole at the Rolla Country Club. I'm just kidding, although 1 bet he was wishing something close to that.

Palmer said many people blame the sports calendar for the early start to the school year. He disagrees, instead pointing the finger at television as the primary culprit.

More specifically, instructional television (ITV) which is the distance learning cooperative schools in rural North Dakota use to offer a wider array of classes to students.

Palmer said school schedules have to match as closely as possible to accommodate the ITV courses offered by each individual district. So if one school starts on August 24. the rest will jump off summer's cliff with it.

In addition, Palmer said a lot of ITV courses are through local colleges, which also start before Labor Day.

In essence, however, in my opinion, all it would take is a meeting in the spring to decide that everyone should start after Labor Day.

Palmer said that's not likely to happen, however, especially if it's a late holiday like this year.

So instead of putting for birdie on the seventh hole on September 4. Palmer and the rest of his staff and all our kids will be sweating in school in the foreseeable future.

That's so depressing to think about that I'm taking the rest of this beautiful day off.



Copyright 2009 Turtle Mountain Star, Rolla, North Dakota. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from SmallTownPapers, Inc.

© 2009 Turtle Mountain Star Rolla, North Dakota. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from DAS.

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