Today's Nominees for Worst People In the World

With apologizes to Keith Olbermann and the staff at Countdown, today’s nominees for Worst People in the World are Colorado State Representative Lynn Hefley (R) and State Senator Peter Groff (D). The two legislators have sponsored a bill that requires all of Colorado’s public schools to start the Tuesday after Labor Day and end no sooner than the Friday before Memorial Day.

What great educational purpose does this legislation serve? Hefley and Groff claim that the primary purpose of the bill is to reduce significant burdens on families. Parents who move into a district may not realize that schools in their new district starts earlier than their previous school and, as a result, their children may miss a week or two of school. Establishing a standard beginning date would ease the burden of finding out when school starts and would increase flexibility in planning family activities.

Those reasons would seem to affect a relatively small number of children, so why would the legislature take up a bill that will dictate the start and end times for all of Colorado’s public schools? The tourism industry needs child labor. According to House Bill 06-1150, “an early-August or mid-August start date for the school year places a significant burden on employers in retail, the food industry, and especially the tourism industry who are forced to work short-handed during what is for many businesses one of the busiest times of the year.”

Evidently local communities are unable to determine what dates work best for them in establishing the starting and ending dates of the school year. Luckily the Colorado Legislature has the time to help them out.

Representative Lynn Hefley and Peter Groff, sponsors of the bill to standardize school calendars to help Colorado’s tourism industry. Today’s, with apologizes to Keith Olbermann and the staff at Countdown, Worst People in the World.