Mat-Su Assembly pushes for school to start after Labor Day

PALMER — The Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assembly wants the region’s school district to push the start of school until after Labor Day.

The Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District’s school year typically runs from the second week of August to just before Memorial Day, with different start dates for some district charter schools. No Mat-Su school starts after Labor Day under current calendar plans, according to the district’s website.

The resolution was approved during a regular Assembly meeting Tuesday. The assembly “requests the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School Board to change the start date for all schools in the borough to the day following Labor Day, beginning in 2027,” it states.

The measure says the shift could give the district’s bus contractor more time to find drivers, many of whom spend the summer shuttling tourists. It could also allow students to hunt with their families, work on family farms or take jobs at the Alaska State Fair in late August.m, it states.

As of Wednesday, district bus contractor Durham School Services had canceled 189 Mat-Su bus runs — about 3.5% of all routes — since the first day of school. The cancellations are tied to a statewide shortage of bus drivers that typically stretches through the end of the tourist season in late September.

District officials said moving the start date into early September would not fix the overall busing problem because a later start would likely push the end of the school year past Memorial Day and into mid-June, when the tourist season is already underway and drivers shift to seasonal jobs. 

“We also face this exact same problem in April — these same drivers go back in April,” Mat-Su School District Superintendent Randy Trani said in a presentation during a regular School Board meeting Wednesday. “That would just be robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

Alaska school districts are required by state law to provide 180 instructional days per school year.

The assembly resolution does not suggest how the district could make up the roughly 11 instructional days lost by moving the start of school into September.

About 75% of Mat-Su parents said they prefer an August school start date over a start after Labor Day, according to a 2023 school district survey.  

Trani said the district will survey parents again about the proposal before considering any changes. 

Assembly member Michael Bowles proposed the resolution. The assembly approved it 5-2, with Assembly members Maxwell Sumner and Ron Bernier voting no.

Sumner and Bernier said in interviews that they voted against the measure because they believe recommendations or decisions about the school calendar fall outside the assembly’s purview.

The school start date was moved from Labor Day to mid-August in 2006 to align high school semester start and end dates and related testing with the late-December winter break, Trani said.

Whether to move the start date back into September is a complex decision that could have sweeping consequences beyond testing dates, School Board member Kathy McCollum said in an interview.

McCollum, a retired elementary school teacher, said that while the mid-August start date does contribute to absenteeism early in the year as students take days off for the state fair or hunting, keeping students in classrooms in May and into June is equally problematic.

“That’s a huge decision – bigger than Mr. Bowles thinks. It affects families; they have to change daycare, and it impacts businesses,” she said.