Zenaida Modeste
Staff Reporter
March 5, 2020
This fall, school buses will be arriving earlier than usual–on August 25th, to be exact. Starting school before Labor Day is back, and many are not happy about it.
For the past couple of years, students all across the state of Maryland have gotten familiar with starting school after Labor Day after governor Larry Hogan announced his “extended summer” back in 2016. “This didn’t last long at all, it was my freshman year when the plan first went into effect and it is my senior year and they are changing it back,” said junior Desset Araya.
It was announced in the fall of 2019 that Maryland schools were no longer required to start school after Labor Day. Maryland legislators overrode Hogan’s precedent, and many counties, Howard County included, jumped at the opportunity to change their calendars back to its original form. For the upcoming school year, school is scheduled to start on the 25th of August.
There are other changes being made to the calendar as well regarding winter break. In the 2020-2021 academic school year, winter break will finally last 2 weeks! However, this also means that students will remain in school up until Christmas Eve.
This plan has more negative effects than positive. “I’m just glad they did all this after I’m graduating,” said senior Cedric Briken. With starting back in August, school will be set to let out in early June of 2021. While some may argue that the calendar changing is beneficial for students because it’ll be a “longer” summer, in reality it won’t be that much of a difference.
With the new calendar changes, winter break will finally last two whole weeks. The only problem is that break will start on Christmas Eve. The holiday break will start on December 24th and run up until January 6th. While some students might be excited about a longer break, it is unrealistic and not likely that a lot of students will remain in school up until Christmas Eve.
Hopefully next year won’t be a tough year for me because I will be a senior, but Howard County is really shaking things up. With redistricting, new schools being built and calendar changes, the students of Howard County are in for an interesting school year next year.
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