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When I was a kid, the school year stretched to just this side of eternity. Now that I'm a parent, the term is but the blink of an eye. On a fine September morning, Martha and I sigh with relief as we anticipate getting lots of work done, now that the house isn't full of kids. Just moments later, it is June, and they're running home with their final report cards and inviting friends over to listen to the latest Bon Jovi album.
So I was heartened when Rep. Elwood Gillis announced he will support a longer school year. My productivity would rise, and thus Colorado would become a happier, more prosperous place. Those parents who have jobs would likewise welcome a longer school year, with the consequent reduction in day-care costs and associated aggravations.
But that's only part of us. There are some troubling financial implications for a major segment of the Colorado economy.
Gillis wants to increase the school year from nine months to 11 months for grades K-6. He has cited some good reasons, even though it will cost money, which is always in short supply at the Statehouse. But it is the long-term effects which could destroy our vital tourist industry.
As it is now, kids all over America are out of school during the summer. So that's when families take vacations. A goodly number of those vacations involve visits to the Rocky Mountains. These families spend money with pine-knot motels, greasy-spoon diners, first-aid clinics, tow-truck drivers and the many other amenities Colorado provides for tourists.
The annual migration of laden station wagons is of critical importance to the economies of mountain towns. Early one summer a few years ago, I noticed that things seemed slow, and every tourist operator was whining even more loudly than usual. I started checking. It turned out that Illinois and Iowa account for a substantial fraction of our tourists. The Midwest had just been through a brutal winter, which closed schools for entire weeks. That time had to be made up in June. The resulting delay in vacations was costing this area thousands of dollars every day.
It doesn't take a wizard to predict what will happen if the Gillis proposal succeeds and other states decide to do the same thing. Colorado will lose most of its summer tourists.
Even if other states don't follow Colorado's lead, there's another danger to the tourist industry. It's reasonable to expect that if the year is extended for grades K-6, we will soon have an 11-month year for grades 7-12, too.
The summer tourist families would still pour into Colorado from other states, but they wouldn't benefit us, because nobody would be available to take their money. The short-order cook who fries everything in grease that hasn't been changed since 1983, the maid who never cleans the dust bunnies and used condoms out from under the motel bed, the pimpled mechanic who merely waits for the old vapor-locked fuel pump to cool while charging for a new one -- they're all high-school kids with summer jobs in our tourist industry.
An 11-month school year would eliminate this vast pool of cheap labor. Our tourist industry relies on cheap help -- the last time I checked, the average weekly wage in the Colorado tourist industry was all of $185.
With that kind of wage scale, the tourist industry will have trouble attracting adults for the dynamic employment it offers. Further, if Colorado students spend that much more time in school, presumably they will be better educated. They might want to be doctors or lawyers, and it's hard to imagine that they would be satisfied with glamorous careers as fry cooks or lift attendants, working for enterprises that tell you when and how to smile.
Let's face it. We can have an educated population. Or we can have a tourist industry. But we can't have both. Elwood Gillis may have his heart in the right place, but he obviously hasn't thought this through.
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