School calendar questioned by some

Is an early start for the school year bad for business? It may be if your business hires a lot of high school kids during the summer.

The biggest operation of that type in Sisters appears to be Ray’s Food Place. That’s why Ray’s manager Jeff McDonald recently called Chamber of Commerce Manager Cheryl Rhea and asked the chamber to do a survey of its members on the issue. His call was prompted by the decision of the Sisters School Board to set a 2005-06 calendar that will start classes on Wednesday, August 31 for grades 7, 8 and 10 through 12. Classes will start Tuesday, August 30 for grades one through 6 and grade 9.

McDonald told The Nugget that the week before Labor Day “is a very busy time for us.” He said last year during that week the store employed 17 high school kids who worked a total of 620 hours.

“This will be devastating for us,” he said.

So the chamber office sent an e-mail to its members asking if the early date would adversely affect their businesses. A story about the poll was also published in the May 18 Nugget. Although the final results were not to be tallied until May 24, Rhea said late last week that most of the respondents so far “said it (the start date) wouldn’t have any impact on their businesses because they don’t have high school employees…people like a bank or a mortgage service. But a lot of them responded as parents, saying that they would rather see, for example, a shorter spring break or fewer days off during the year rather than a start prior to Labor Day weekend.”

Sisters School Superintendent Ted Thonstad said that at the request of Board Chairman Glen Lasken the issue will be on the agenda for the school board’s next meeting, June 13. But he said it would be “very difficult” to change the calendar now.

The calendar was adopted in mid-March. Thonstad said “it was adopted basically to equalize the trimesters as much as possible. And we need to be out of school the second week of June because most of the training classes the teachers take start the third week of June. And when you have a two-week spring break, which nobody would want to give up, you’ve got to put the time in someplace.”

One big factor is the board’s hope that the district will receive enough money from the state to restore the five days that were cut because of lack of funding in the current year. That will push the 2005-06 school year back up to the previous standard of 175 days of instruction.

But the chamber’s informal soundings indicate that at least a few people would prefer a single week of spring vacation if that would move the start of school to after Labor Day. Most schools in Oregon take only one week of spring vacation in March. Sisters added a second week in the mid-90s as an outgrowth of a debate over a proposal to try out a year-round school calendar.

The larger discussion went nowhere but the two-week spring break was instituted and has been around ever since. Rhea said the chamber will not take a formal position on the start-date question but will pass its poll results along to the school district.