Some New York City students may be cheering the extra long summer break caused by this year’s late Labor Day, but the Sept. 10 start date is causing headaches for parents scrambling for childcare.
“It’s 11 weeks, almost,” said Molly Inden, a parent of a 7-year-old in Brooklyn. “So that’s an extraordinary amount of time to be paying for childcare.”
Labor Day is always the first Monday in September, and this year it falls on Sept. 7, the latest possible date. Typically, when the holiday lands earlier, the summer break is closer to 10 weeks long.
“I can feel the desperation on our waitlist,” said Jessie Hartman, owner of Brooklyn Click and Connect, which runs Lego-themed camps and afterschool programs south of Prospect Park. “I know people need childcare. I’m one of them.”
Her camp costs $575 for a week, though some area camps cost hundreds of dollars more.
Hartman said she’s still figuring out how her rising fifth grader will spend the last week before school. “We’re just going to pray our kid leaves the house instead of just getting sucked into an iPad.”
The late Labor Day is yet another quirk of the school calendar causing angst for parents. In recent years, the addition of more cultural holidays has led to more days off, which in turn has made it difficult for officials to reach the minimum of 180 instructional days required by the state.
City officials have cited that 180-day minimum when explaining their reluctance to offer snow days off, or cancel school for other climate-related reasons such as wildfire smoke and floods.
Education department officials said agreements with staff unions, including the United Federation of Teachers and the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, require a post-Labor Day start with two prep days for teachers before kids return to classrooms.
The city’s free summer program, Summer Rising, ended for elementary students on Aug. 14, and many other camps stopped mid-August as well.
At a public meeting last week, Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels said he had been hearing “more and more from parents” struggling to keep their kids occupied during the waning days of summer. “This gap when the camps are done, it’s tough on our parents so I know people are looking forward to the first day of school,” he said.
Inden, who is a single mom, said the camp she’s been sending her daughter to isn’t running through the first week of September, and even if it was, she’s already spent hundreds of dollars on camps. “It adds a lot of extra money to the already expensive camps, and then I’ve been taking more time off,” she said.
David Bloomfield, an education and law professor at Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center, noted that many school districts across the country start before Labor Day. He advocates for an earlier start date to create room in the crowded calendar for unexpected disruptions like snow days as well as to boost overall learning.
“Though we wring our hands about low reading scores, refusing to start school before Labor Day increases the span of summer learning loss,” he said.
New York City is among a handful of school districts where classes still start after Labor Day.
Atlanta’s public school students went back to class Aug. 3. Children in Houston went back on Aug. 10. Classes in San Francisco resumed Aug. 17. Each of those school districts also start summer earlier than New York City.
An analysis by the Pew Research Center found southern school districts tend to have earlier start dates than northern districts.
Education historian Stephan Brumberg said schools were open almost all year round in the 19th century, but it was not mandatory and attendance fluctuated. Then as affluent and middle class families started leaving the city during the hottest months and as some attended camps outside the city, officials instated summer break, with Labor Day marking the end of summer.
The addition of new cultural holidays to the school calendar has also made it increasingly difficult for the city to meet the minimum requirement of 180 instructional days, particularly since union contracts also require school to end by June 28.
Inden said she thinks the city should consider moving up the start date. “I think parenting in the city is a lot of hustling,” she said. “I think especially for the working parents in the five boroughs it’s a very reasonable consideration.”
At Click and Connect lego camp, Hartman said the waitlist for the final week of this summer is more than five times longer than previous weeks. “People have been inquiring about their place on the waitlist, asking ‘Should I just give up hope?’
“People are just fatigued from the summer Tetris,” she added.