I've been teaching for ten years, the last four of which has been in one of the best districts in the great state of New Jersey.  A longer school year doesn't necessarily mean what we have now just longer.  With the structure the way it is now, students are really done in April/May and don't rev up until October.  While we would all like to think Aug/Sept to May/June is really the school year, it's not.  Teachers work hard on getting the kids to begin the year, refreshing students' memories on what they know (or once knew) and then trying to keep them on task when they begin fantasizing of their long summer come the first sign of a bumble bee or butterfly (depending on where one lives).

A restructured schedule, maybe six weeks on two weeks off, or something like that, can do wonders for the minds of our youth.

As a teacher, we would just have one, small, multi-billion dollar request...put air conditioning in every single school in the country.