Texas Politician Set To Propose School Starting In September

One thing that has confused so many is why schools start at different times and not in unison. For example, Texas tends to go back to school in the middle of August, sometimes a touch later towards the end of the month.

Other places wait until after Labor Day to get things kicked off, which means there are students JUST now going back to school.

WHY ARE THE DATES SO DIFFERENT

Truthfully, each state has its own reasons as to when they start the school year. Some start later to save money, others do it because they don't want to start school, then a couple of weeks later have a holiday.

The earlier start dates? Sometimes it's about taking advantage of weather, and sometimes it's just a matter of not wanting to run school into June. I know in Colorado when I was growing up, we were always out before Memorial Day weekend.

HOW DO SCHOOLS SAVE MONEY WITH START DATE

Simply put, it's all about the weather outside. If it's blazing hot, schools have to crank up that air conditioning to keep the students and administration cool throughout the day. When it's too hot out, those A/C units will pump cool air all day.

It seems a bit strange then that Texas starts school in August. Temperatures are typically 90 and above for the majority of the month, with plenty of places hitting triple digits relatively often. If we wanted to save money, why wouldn't they start later?

IS TEXAS THINKING ABOUT A LATER SCHOOL START DATE

It seems we aren't the only ones thinking that. A Texas representative, Republican Jared Patterson has been working on a proposal that would allow us to start the school year later to take advantage of the cooler temps that seem to hit in September.

He is planning on putting this proposal in front of everyone at the next legislative session that takes place in January, and his proposal is to push back the school start date to after the Labor Day weekend. In other words, if it passes, this week would be the first week of school for your kiddos.

WHAT'S THE REASONING FOR THE PROPOSAL

Remember how we mentioned money earlier? Well, it's not necessarily tied to money, but sort of. It's more related to the fact that August tends to be the hottest month of the year, thus more people demanding energy to stay cool in their homes. The same goes for schools.

Our power grid in Texas already gets taxed pretty hard, especially in August, so adding all these schools to the grid can really take a toll on it. They've been looking for ways to ease the state's power grid, and Patterson sees this as one piece of the puzzle.

CAN IT PASS

According to Patterson, he's expecting support from both sides of the aisle, both Republican and Democratic, and he also feels a lot of parents would be on board with a change like this.

The thing about it is it's not as simple as that, and it could cause some other issues that would complicate changing the school dates, so it isn't as cut and dried as you'd think. There will be a lot of discussion wrapped around it with most likely numerous changes to the proposal before it would land on our ballots.