A more important question that we should be asking is: what should we be doing to insure our kids are competitive in a global market that is gaining steam daily? Having too many holidays now could mean a lot fewer -- for the kids -- in years to come.

Note the following piece -- 2005 vintage. Things have actually deteriorated since 2005. California just reported this week that one out of four high school students drop out. Georgia's rate is higher. Point being, as we take time off, we also drop further behind.

U.S. Drops in International Education Rankings
"I understand the difficulty that a nation like the United States has in achieving educational excellence."--Prof. Christopher Kiernan
Dylan Sharek
Issue date: 10/20/05 Section: News

Christopher Kiernan, coordinator of the American Studies department and history professor at Salve, is extremely passionate about education. Not only has he worked in higher education for 40 years, but he was the first Northeast regional director of the National Assessment of Educational Progress - an ongoing project that monitors how students are performing at ages nine, 13, 17, and post-college groups.

In a study released Sept. 13 on the the Paris-based Organization for Cooperation and Development, it was revealed that among adults 25 to 34, the United States is No. 9 among industrialized nations in the share of its population that has at least a high school degree. In the share of its population within the same age group holding a college degree, the United States ranks seventh. As few as 20 years ago, it ranked first in both evaluations.

The average high temperature in June is 86 degrees, and the average high in August is 88. So either way, you are going to have to run the A/C. As far as needing a week's break at Thanksgiving and 2 weeks for Christmas, yes, I do think that we need them. The older my kids get (one in middle school, and one in high school), the more we all enjoy the breaks. We even like the mid-winter break in February. And before anyone can chime in with their assumption that my husband or I are airline employees, no we are not. We have gone to Florida a couple times during that week, and the weather is great there. But we have also just spent time here enjoying the break, and doing something fun locally like the zoo. The weather here in February usually is far from arctic, and is still quite pleasant.

So there are some people like our family who are happy with the start of school in August.

In the 10 years I lived here, I have never found out the rationale behind the start of school so early. Do any of you "oldtimers" know the reason school doesn't go September to June? That more realistic time frame still includes 180 days. Do we really need 2 weeks at Christmas, or one whole week at Thanksgiving, or a whole week in February? Why couldn't those breaks be trimmed instead?

Summer is HOT. Why start in August????? Running school into June makes more sense. Let us keep the WARM summer time with our kids.

Again, you are shown the majority of the feelings of the public. Will you ignore it AGAIN???