Patricia Denning is among a group of parents not happy about the starting date of classes in Lawrence public schools.

It’s too early, she said.

The 11 parents of students from several Lawrence schools are disgruntled about classes beginning this year on Aug. 11, and they want the trend of starting school in the early weeks of August to end.

They’ve sent a letter asking that the school district’s calendar committee include parent representation, and they are in the early stages of collecting signatures from parents and teachers throughout the district who agree with them.

“The start of the school year impacts families,” Denning said Tuesday. “I think it’s important that we have parent input because it does impact us.”

Kansas law requires that a school year be made up of at least 186 days, or at least 1,116 hours. Lawrence public school students attend 1,116 hours in 175 days of classes. The state does not mandate when the school year begins or ends.

In each of the past three years, Denning said she has written school board members and informed them of her concern and dislike of the early start date. The first day of school has been Aug. 11 this year, Aug. 13 in 2003 and Aug. 14 in 2002.

That’s progressively earlier than in the recent past. For example, in 1999 and 1995, the district’s first day of school was Aug. 23.

Committee input

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The district’s calendar committee hasn’t started meeting to come up with a proposal for the 2005-2006 school year and won’t until after Sept. 27, which is when the school board members will give the committee the task.

“We’ll give the committee some information and some things we’d like them to take into consideration,” board President Leni Salkind said.

Asking the committee to look at the start date isn’t out of the question, she added.

Sandee Crowther, the district’s executive director of planning and program improvement, is a co-chair on the calendar committee. The 14-member committee is made up of teachers and school administrators, but no parents from the public at-large are on the panel. The last time that happened, Crowther said, was probably 20 years ago.

Though parental input is taken into consideration, Crowther said other factors also must be weighed in developing a school calendar, including the calendar followed by Kansas University, the biggest employer in the city, and the district’s contract with teachers.

“It may seem simple, but it’s a complex issue,” Crowther said.

She said the committee has tried to have the same spring and fall break as KU. For winter break, the district is contractually obligated to give teachers eight school days off.

One of the reasons the district began classes earlier is to balance out the days in the semester so students could complete finals before going on winter break.

Late-start benefits

While those might be valid factors, Denning says she feels like district officials are disregarding parental input.

“It doesn’t make it a family-friendly place, and I think it contributes to the exodus of students to the private-school systems,” she said.

Starting school later, she reasons, carries with it benefits that can help the district.

Though she acknowledged this year’s cool summer was an anomaly, Denning said the cost to air-condition schools was generally lower in May or June as opposed to in August, “the hottest time of the year.”

Tom Bracciano, division director of operations and facility planning for the school district, said based on last year’s figures, the district could have saved $9,000 in utilities if schools had started two weeks later.

“That wouldn’t be the case this year. Traditionally, though, that’s about how much we would have saved,” Bracciano said. “Of course, last year, we had days where we were looking at days with a temperature of 104 degrees in September.”

In addition to a later start, Denning also proposes a shorter school year with longer school days.

Such a move would lessen busing costs, she said, which a district official pegged at $16,959 a day including extracurricular activities such as sporting events and field trips.

Crowther said the committee could consider adding time onto a school day, but members also would have to look at its effect on school schedules, especially at the junior high and high school levels, and bus riders.

“This is a situation where you can’t please everyone,” Crowther said.