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into rebelling against the start date law back when it first was talked about.
We got letters and stuff about the district would be forced to give 1st semester final exams after winter break, meaning kids would have to study during their winter break....in a district where a good chunk of families are high income and either leave the state (or sometimes the country) on vacation for the entire break. Good luck telling those same affluent Plano families that their kids will be having to carry their books/backpacks with them while the family is vacationing across Europe or Asia!!
Ugh...the year Plano started August 1st. They had this yearly habit of doing early start dates and then three day weekends at least once a month..then the "fall break" for a week in October, Labor Day was turned into a four day weekend, as was Easter weekend (off Friday and Monday). I figured out at one point that if they trimmed some of those random, frequent days off, they could get 2 more weeks of class time even with the late start date.
I don't know if you remember when the middle of the night decision by TX lawmakers popped up in the morning headlines about the new start date law...it was kept off the public radar til after the fact (out of fear of districts complaining about losing local control, no doubt). One of the reasons given was the new late date would allow migrant families to get back into their Texas districts..too many of their kids were missing a week or more of school cuz they didn't get back from Mexico soon enough. Less kids in school = less school funding since attendence is tied to how much state money each district gets.
But then immigrations issue became a huge national deal and Texas lawmakers dropped that reason and then started saying increasing tourism was their goal (more $$ in the tourism industry, better economy, kids earning more $$ since they get to work in August, etc...") Goodness knows how much $$$$ Texas lawmakers got from tourism lobbyists...which is most likely the real reason for the new law!!
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