Missouri House Bill Article 280 is the bill passed on May 28. This states loosely that all schools in Missouri can start at the earliest date of August 24th for the 2020-21 school year and will extend the school year until early June instead of May. 

According to the Superintendent of the City of St. Charles School District, Dr. Jason Sefrit, the bill wasn’t explicitly made just for schools.

“It’s my personal understanding that the Bill passed due to overwhelming pressure from the state tourism industry to move back the starting date for public schools to ensure families can travel more/longer into the summer season and to ensure businesses/tourist industry has employees (working-age students) available to work longer in the summer season,” Sefrit said. “I’m not personally against starting later, but in doing so, it presents challenges in our school calendar.” 

This means there will be many changes in next year’s school calendar.

“We will have to do a new school calendar, we have to look at how are we going to look at finals, and we also have to look at how it will affect the other schools like the elementary schools and middle schools because they don’t have the same finals schedule as us or really finals at all,” St. Charles High School Principal Jeff Walker said. 

These changes are going to be made by a specific group.

“We have a calendar committee that is speaking with parents, students, and teachers, so they have to look at what dates or what months that need to be worked around or moved,” Walker said.

With this new bill, How is it affecting students of the school district? Also, what does this mean for parents and teachers? 

Junior Aniyah Hamel is unsure about the changes the bill will bring.

“This new bill will also push all of the exams and will push everything back by more than a week or so,” she said.

Hamel also feels the bill will create an extended summer break. 

“I assume that the House Bill will cause the parents some distress because that means if we have more days of summer, at least this summer, the students also have to either stay at home by themselves longer or have to go to daycare longer,” Hamel said. “Therefore, making it so parents have to pay more for things during the summer.” 

Click here to see the full version of the Missouri House Bill 280