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Should public schools be allowed to start before Labor Day?

Posted at 5:24 AM, Aug 28, 2017
and last updated 2017-08-28 07:26:16-04

On Monday, hundreds of students will be heading back to school, a full week before Labor Day, including some in metro Detroit.

It's a growing trend among public schools, and a number of metro Detroit schools were granted waivers to go back early. Not all are utilizing them.

For years, the hallways inside of schools were empty until after the Labor Day weekend, as a push by the state to boost tourism to northern destinations, keeping valuable dollars in our states.

One of the schools going back is Oxford High School. The school said it made the decision to align their schedules better with local colleges because of the "early college" students on their high school campus.

"It's bittersweet. It's good for the kids to be in school longer, so they don't lose so much in the summer, but in the same time it's a lot when they're in school," Megan Guzman said. She has two kids at Oxford High School.

There is a bill currently being looked at in Lansing that would allow all schools to go back before Labor Day, but it would force schools to close on the Monday and Friday around the holiday.