Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to include further comment from Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s office.
WASHINGTON — For the first time, public schools across Maryland are required to wait until after Labor Day to start classes.
But in Prince George’s County, there’s continued pushback against the later start time.
County Executive Rushern Baker, a Democrat running for governor, joined the county school system’s CEO, Dr. Kevin Maxwell, at a news conference to push for a reversal of Gov. Larry Hogan’s executive order, which mandates the new starting time.
When Hogan announced his executive order in Ocean City last year, he said the move would be good for the state’s economy and for families looking to extend their summer break.
But in Prince George’s County, the move is seen as damaging to kids, many of whom come from homes where hunger is constant and budgets are tight.
According to Maxwell, “64 or 65 percent of our children are on free or reduced meals.”
And the parents of those children, he said, are put in a real bind.
“They’re not vacationing for an extra week or two,” he said. “They’re not putting their kids in a summer camp for an extra week or two. They’re trying to figure out whether they go to work or how they get child care for their children.”
Elsie Jacobs, a local activist and president of a group called Suitland Action Team, said the delayed school opening comes at the end of the month — when many families’ budgets are dwindling.
“The children here are suffering,” Jacobs said. “Parents are suffering — waiting for school to open these next two weeks.” In recent years, Prince George’s County schools opened in the final weeks of August.
Maxwell said another reason the school system wanted to keep its schedule of August openings is to prevent what’s often referred to as “summer slide,” when academic gains made by children slip after weeks spent outside of the classroom.
In 2014, a Maryland state task force formed under then-Gov. Martin O’Malley studied the issue and recommended having schools start after Labor Day. The only county that built its calendar around a post-Labor Day start was Worcester County, where Ocean City is located.
Maxwell pointed out that in Virginia, state law often referred to as the “King’s Dominion Law” requires schools to open after Labor Day unless they meet a state formula for early opening. Some of the largest school districts there — Loudoun, Fairfax and Prince William counties — have opted to open before Labor Day.
When contacted about the complaints about the delayed school opening from Prince George’s County’s executive and school chief, Hogan spokeswoman Hannah Marr responded via email: “Starting after Labor Day is a common sense decision that the overwhelming majority of Marylanders — including teachers, parents and students — support and was recommended by a task force of education experts commissioned by the legislature under the previous administration.”
The governor’s office has also repeated that the later school start doesn’t change the 180 days of instruction required by the state.
During Tuesday’s news conference at Suitland Elementary School, Baker said he’d ask lawmakers in Annapolis to reverse the executive order that requires the post-Labor Day start to classes, citing the need for local control.
Jacobs agreed, saying communities ought to have more say in the matter.
“People need to ask the communities,” he said. “Ask us! Ask us!”
Saying she regularly visits with families in more than a dozen apartment complexes across Suitland, Jacobs told reporters she’s seen the impact that school breakfasts and lunches can make on area families.
“I feel their pain and their hunger,” she said.
