During my formative years at Mountlake Terrace High School, I treated homework as one giant Houdini act.
I never did anything until the last minute. Given weeks to write a paper, there was a zero percent chance I would start it before midnight the day it was due. Procrastination wasn’t a personality flaw; it was an art form.
Like my obsession with the angst-pop of Morrissey, the appeal of procrastination wore off over time. Now that I’m an adult, I appreciate the virtue of planning ahead and the inconvenience it causes everyone when you don’t.
That brings us to the school calendar.
In Everett and other local districts, the calendar is part of teacher contract negotiations. When those negotiations remain incomplete, there’s no official first day of school. For now, Everett just has a guess that it’ll probably be the Wednesday after Labor Day.
The longer negotiations last, the longer parents have to wait to commit to work schedules, day care and vacation plans. Stay-at-home moms and dads can’t even be sure when to plan that happy dance around the empty house after kids go back to school.
In our latest poll at HeraldNet.com, we asked whether the delay bothers you. A few, 17 percent, said it’s no problem at all, and 23 percent said the inconvenience is OK if it helps teachers. That leaves a whopping 60 percent who deemed it an unnecessary inconvenience for parents.
As one of those parents, I have a request: Throw us a bone and send a provisional September schedule home with kids’ report cards in June. Negotiate to your hearts’ content over the rest of the calendar, but give us a little head start.
Don’t make us wait until the last minute. We’re all too old for that.
— Doug Parry, @parryracer
For our next poll, we’d like to know if you think work and life have gotten out of balance.
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