Shore feels labor drain as schools open early
It's hard to feel bad for 6-year-old Jahsir Lipscomb and his family after the month they just spent with family in Jamaica.
It's hard to feel bad for 6-year-old Jahsir Lipscomb and his family after the month they just spent with family in Jamaica.
But they returned a week earlier than planned because Capt. James Lawrence School in Burlington City, where Jahsir is about to start first grade, opens tomorrow - a week earlier than usual. It's one of many New Jersey schools bucking tradition this year to start classes before Labor Day.
The change comes because, for the first time since 1998, the holiday is Sept. 7 - the latest it can be.
So, yesterday afternoon, Jahsir was at Moorestown Mall with his father, John Lipscomb, to buy sneakers and other school necessities.
"I was going to do something for Labor Day," John Lipscomb lamented. "But we have to be here."
In New Jersey, like most states, local districts set their own calendars. In most of the country, there's been a push to start earlier, partly so final exams can be given before the winter break. But schools here and in most Northeastern states have largely missed that trend.
One reason for its failing to have caught on locally has been concern for the Shore. High-school students guard the beaches and serve the water ice. And, of course, families with school-age children often vacation there.
"We're definitely feeling it," said Scott Meredith, owner of Wavejammer Surf Shop in Lavallette, Ocean County.
"A lot of the people who have houses in the area headed home early," he said. "Town's quieter than you'd normally expect a week before Labor Day."
On top of that, Meredith said, two of the four high-school students at his shop stopped working last weekend to get ready for school, starting tomorrow. College students also tend to leave their summer jobs early, and the combination of problems means he will be working seven days a week until the end of the season.
At Gillian's Wonderland Pier, a neon-glowing amusement park in Ocean City, personnel manager John Kavchok said that he expected thinner crowds than usual this week but that it wouldn't sink business.
"Parents are always going to spend money on their children," he said.
The late Labor Day posed a problem, said Craig Wilkie, school business administrator in Burlington City. If school started after the holiday, he said, it would be the last week of June before the district could fit in its 183 days of classes.
There would be a week less next summer to get schools ready for the 2010-11 school year. And a few snow days could throw that schedule into a tizzy.
No one tracks exactly how many New Jersey districts have made the same decision this year - but it's many more than usual, creating a patchwork of first days of school around the state.
Wilkie said the decision to open schools early was finalized in March. "We've had no phone calls, no complaints about it," he said.
It's not clear whether pre-Labor Day starts will be permanent. Next year could be a test because Labor Day is Sept. 6, only one day earlier.
