My friends, I’m here to tell you: Summer in New Mexico is officially over.

How do I know?

 

a. There’s a crisp bit of chill in the morning air.
b. Clothing stores are filling up with bulky fall merchandise.
c. The sun has crossed the celestial equator from north to south, and day and night are of approximately equal length.
d. I drove past the marquee at my son’s school and it said "Meet the Teacher" day is next Thursday.

 

As all parents of children in Albuquerque Public Schools know, the answer is, of course, d.

You know it really is time to pack it up and stop dreaming of lazy days of summer when the sign at your kid’s school tells you to. Not to mention the fact that the state’s helpful tax-free holiday — which oddly enough comes just before most APS schoolteachers release their iron-clad, brand-specific lists of required school supplies — arrives this very weekend.

It’s quite possible that I’m being more juvenile than my children, but I’m not sure I’m ready for school to start. Yesterday, as I broiled in 100-degree heat while watching my son race around at football practice in full pads and a helmet, I pondered the wisdom of starting up school IN THE MIDDLE OF SUMMER.

It’s simply not natural…maybe even not American….to make children go back to school when it is so hot, reasoned my heat-addled brain. This is the desert Southwest! Their cousins in the Midwest never go back until after Labor Day. What could possibly be worse, I thought….and then I remembered.

Year-round school.

Many years ago, before I had any kids or any real business going to school board meetings, I sat through Albuquerque parents’ epic battle with the APS school board over year-round school.

It was 15 years ago, and I had a front row seat due to my coveted assignment as the Albuquerque Journal’s education reporter. It was a blessing and a curse, really.

The beat had the high profile I wanted — I had front page stories every day. But my idealistic, young self wasn’t happy with the way my editors put such emphasis on the school board and the superintendent and the administrative process, and not on teachers, students and actual education, like I thought it should be.

As it turned out, year-round school made that decision for us all. The issue simply eclipsed all others.

The school board members who wanted to convert APS to a year-round schedule argued that scheduling classes on various year-round "tracks" with short breaks in between would improve academic performance by preventing the "brain drain" that occurs when students are away all summer.
Year-round advocates also said adopting year-round school would fully utilize existing schools and keep APS from having to build as many new schools — eventually saving the district hundreds of millions of dollars.

But those who opposed year-round school — including most parents, teachers and pretty much everyone else in Albuquerque — said it would simply ruin their lives.

Teachers weren’t about to give up their long summer breaks. Parents argued that they wouldn’t be able to take their families on summer vacation.

 

Business owners wondered where they would get teenage employees for the busy summer tourist season.

Some parents with students in elementary and middle school or middle school and high school contemplated nightmare scenarios in which their children were placed on different tracks and would never be out of school at the same time.

As a reporter, I tried to cover the screaming parents and beleagered board members with the objectivity I learned about in J-school.

But that wasn’t good enough for some. I remember one parent yelling at me, "You don’t have children, do you? So how can you possibly know how we feel?"

Idealistically, I found that statement deeply offensive. I was a journalist — I didn’t have to be a parent to cover schools.

In my objective opinion, the whole thing was just handled badly. Outraged parents felt the decision was foisted upon them by an uncaring school board. And while I thought the board members were being awfully stubborn, I knew they did care, deeply.

Leonard DeLayo, Pat Branda, Mary Lee Martin, Doug McVicker and APS superintendent Jack Bobroff — were all nice people, and certainly low on non-school-related scandal and drama, compared to those who came after them.

But they were wrong on year-round school.

 

DeLayo retired from the school board in March of 2007, but before he did, he became one of the board’s most vocal advocates of soliciting parent involvement in setting the APS schedule. Calling the practice of starting school the first week of August and ending it in June "dysfunctional," he urged the board to nudge the starting day back. And he also spoke out against bringing the year-round schedule back for some South Valley schools.

"Been there, done that," he told the Albuquerque Tribune shortly before he left the board.

 

Ultimately, the year-round conversion failed because the community rejected it, thoroughly and completely, DeLayo told me the other day when I called him just to reminisce.

"That’s it. You hit it right on the head," he said. "The issue was one of traditional values. People wanted their summers off."

 

Oddly enough, the idea of year-round schedules did resonate with a handful of Albuquerque schools, who maintain year-round schedules to this day. Why do they work? Because the communities want them; because they chose that schedule.

When I think about my greatest challenges as a reporter, I often think of covering Albuquerque’s galvanic year-round battle.

 

But I’m not a reporter anymore, I’m the mom of two kids, and I laugh at my former idealistic self.

Year-round school was a bad idea! If someone tried to cram it down my throat now, I’d be at school board meetings screaming, too.

Starting school in the middle of summer is bad enough, and no matter how many times APS tries to explain why it has to happen, I still don’t get it.

But I do know it could be worse.