So why are kids in school in August?

Is it hot out here or what? With the temperature inching toward 100 degrees this week, the real point is that it’s hot in there – for already-back-to-school students sweating it out in area schoolrooms, most of which are about as far from air-conditioned as you'd ever want to get.

How hot is it? It’s so hot (drumroll, please) that a number of area school districts released their students early on Wednesday, and will do so for the rest of the week. But the real punchline is that schools were in session in the first place. I don’t imagine kids get the joke.

Although more extreme than in some years past, this heat wave is all too typical of mid- to late-August in Greater Cincinnati – and all too predictable. Which begs the question: What in blazes are schools doing hauling kids back into their hotbeds of learning for, in some cases, virtually the entire month of August? Can you say "heat stroke"? I knew you could.

I know, I know. The complexities of modern education – bus scheduling, testing calendars, athletics, logistics, contracts, whatever – make it necessary, school officials say. But many of us can remember the days when the school year was neatly and logically framed by the holidays that traditionally define American summer as well – schools let out right after Memorial Day, then called students back in right after Labor Day. You avoided the sweltering and/or dry-roasting heat. Kids concentrated better and learned more, I’d bet. Don't dismiss this as the artifact of an antiquated agrarian educational model.

The next education reform ought to be called No Child Left Behind in the Mojave Desert in August.