Too Soon

Next year I am told that the school year will begin almost two full weeks earlier than it does this year. This is not because of some arcane business about full moons or third Mondays or any other superstitious rot. I am in the education business, and the idea that we want to get our hands on those little minds as soon as possible has long been the secret desire of oh-so-many reformers. This whole summer vacation business was all about making kids available for the planting and the harvest. Send them back to school when the crops have begun to wither and dry.
The kids I teach are about as far removed from that reality as anyone could imagine. When I first came to the teaching  profession, I did so at a year-round school. That did not mean that the students were attending school year round. That was my job. They were still attending classes nine months each year. I took off a couple weeks each summer to celebrate my birthday and the Fourth of July. It was the way I was able to re-calibrate my personal clock and the way I could monitor the next phase of my tenure.
Year round school was a space issue. We didn't have enough seats for the kids who attended our school for them to all sit down at the same time, so we sent a group of them away for a month at a time. Then they would come back for three months until it was time for them to evacuate once again. Most of the teachers took these breaks along with their kids, but since I was the Computer Guy, I hung around to make sure that everyone got the tech training they deserved.
And then, we weren't a year round school anymore. Enrollment changed and charter schools opened and charter schools closed, and the science behind year round school was no longer necessary because we could now accommodate that certain number of students that made that concept an antiquated one.
And yet, here we are, trying to figure out how to shave off a few more days, weeks, hours from those halcyon moments we call summer. Going back to school before Labor Day makes a lot of our parents grumble, which is amusing since these are the same parents who sigh heavily when presented with the notion of hanging around with their kids for more than a weekend at a time. Generally, they warm to it, as most parents do. Turns out it's not such a bad thing to have junior  rattling about  the house during those warm months when the sun never seems to go down.
Alas, the sun has set on this summer, and  next year will cycle through even more quickly. I will try not  to miss a second of those lazy hazy days. Like I am right now.