Birthdays, back to school, networks & comments

[heidi]

There was a localized outage yesterday for my cable modem and when it went back on for everyone else, it stayed off for me. So no internet via desktop for me until Monday afternoon which means:
Sam, please send chapter in text form
Nifflers, please be patient with us
HPWiki project, I'm unable to wiki til tuesday
People I owe comments to, it'll likely be Tuesday

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At least the sidekick is working.

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Yesterday we had a swim birthday party for Harry, complete with diving for pirate treasure, a pirate cake and Jon jumping into the pool without water wings, which resulted in Aaron jumping into the pool, fully clothed, to rescue him. Jon can swim well with his wings, and moderately when he goes in via the steps but if he jups far from the wall he has nothing to grab to. So aaron rescued him, but it was terrifying-after-the-fact. Bubble suit is now mandatory at the pool, period.

The pool was the perfect end-of-summer activity. And yes, I do mean end of summer. Is it only schools in Florida that open this week? Even the Gap's back to school sales down start until Monday and our local Targets were still putting the supply displays out this past Wednesday. Dave Barry wrote a wonderful piece for the Herald (herald.com) last week, which I can't link to because of the desktop issue, but which is worth searching out, because he explains our feelings about school starting on August 8, to paraphrase, "WTF"?

So we're all set with school supplies, uniforms, heely sneakers for walking and rolling, and lunchables. And it's bloody august.

Hey, at least they can wear shorts.

Comments

[ceilidh]

Re: School start date - We start this Wednesday (as does most of SC) and so does legomymalfoy's nephew in AZ. The reason is that in SC the school year is mandated at 180 days. In order to get 90 days in the first semester for middle/high school and have exams before winter break plus state and locally mandated holidays, etc, you have to start in early August. When I was in school we had first semester exams after winter break which was extraordnarily stupid, as who wants to study over the winter holiday break? And they have found that the high school kids do better on their exams before the break and not after. So, it kind of sucks, but then again school gets out in mid-early May and not early June, so it's not like school actually lasts any longer than it used to.

[gmth.livejournal.com]

We're mandated at 180 days, too, and we don't start until August 29th. And that's earlier than it used to be, because we were constantly running into problems during the winter time (we have at least 4-5 snow days every year), and school kept being pushed out until the end of June. Now we start at the end of August and finish up at the beginning of June and still have a few days built into the schedule for snow. Your vacations must be longer than ours if you have to start so early, because I'd guess you don't get as many snow days there as we do.

[ceilidh]

We had to build in a lot of teacher inservices too (more state mandates) as we used to use them for snow days and then... we couldnt' meet the state inservice requirements). We usually get out around December 18,19ish... we used to get out closer to Christmas and it was such a hassle, and we get the day before Thanksgiving off as well as that Thurs-Fri.

We used to start at end of August and get out at the beginning of June but it's difficult to do that and still have first semester exams before the winter break.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

My high school was private, so we had exams before the break, and they just tweaked the length of the terms so it worked out ok. First term was just shorter than second. I guess there's a reason they can't do that in public schools but I really can't fathom why it's a non-option.