An Alabama lawmaker said it's time to scale back the length of the school year, arguing that longer school years aren’t helping students get any smarter.

“We’re not any better than we were years ago academically,” said Rep. Steve Hurst, R-Talladega, pointing out school years used to be shorter.

“If you had longer summers,” Hurst said, “kids could get jobs, they’d learn work ethics, learn some discipline, and earn some money that could help their parents.

“The public is in favor of this,” Hurst added.

And according to a survey conducted by the University of South Alabama last year, Hurst may be right: the vast majority of Alabama voters---a whopping 85%---say they want longer summers.

In the survey, 83% said school should start either in late August or after Labor Day---more than half of those who responded preferred after Labor Day. When asked when the school year should end, 81% said before Memorial Day, with 24% preferring early May.

The survey was commissioned by the Alabama Association of Camps, a group with an obvious interest in longer summers.

"Kids can't have summer camp without summer," association president Allen McBride said. The group commissioned the poll to give voters a voice in the discussion, he said.

While camps offer many benefits for children, he said, “Camps are only one of many opportunities available to children when they aren't required by the state to sit in a classroom during the summer months.”

The University of South Alabama’s USA Polling Group designed and conducted the survey. A representative sample of 622 voters from across the state participated.

But the Alabama Association of School Boards in recent years lobbied to return control over the calendar to local school boards. Calendars currently vary in length and dates between systems.

In a statement to AL.com, a spokesperson for the AASB said the group has “long held the position that local boards should have autonomy in setting school start/end dates.”

Keeping local control of that decision is a priority for the group that represents school superintendents, too.

"That decision is best made at the local community level," said Ryan Hollingsworth, the director of the superintendents' group. His group will oppose any measure by state lawmakers to mandate start and end dates, he said.

"There's a lot in the mix that goes into the calendar," he said.

Hollingsworth said while some districts squeeze in as many days as possible with the fewest breaks possible, others choose to build in breaks for students and training days for teachers.

"I'm thinking about the months when my kids are sick," he said, which means building breaks in during January and February. Three-day weekends help clear the air, he said, and help keep absenteeism numbers down, which is important to a school and district on report card measures.

The earlier start dates---four districts started school last week---allow more time for learning, he said.

"The earlier I start a school year, then the more instructional time I have before my spring assessments," he said. Test results are weighted heavily on annual school report cards, he said, so time spent learning is a priority.

The later start also means it's hard to squeeze in 90 days of school and semester exams before the winter break, he said.

Taking first semester exams in January after the break isn't productive, he said, because of the time that's needed to catch back up.

Hurst points to the survey suggesting Alabamians would like longer summers for a number of reasons, including more time with family, more time for family trips, and more time for camp and civic activities.

When asked if they preferred a longer summer with traditional breaks or a shorter summer with frequent short breaks during the school year, 70% chose the longer summer vacation.

In 2006, lawmakers expanded the school year from 175 to 180 days, beginning with the 2006-07 school year.

“The argument is that we need to get kids educated,” Hurst said, but there’s no proof that adding days has improved achievement.

Hurst said he’d like to see more collaboration between K-12 and community colleges during summer breaks.

“If we had longer summers like we used to have and set up something at the two-year schools,” he said, “from ninth to twelfth grade, kids could go to learn some type of trade during the summer.”

Hurst said with only 40% of Alabama’s graduates headed to college, the remaining 60% need to get experience in the job market.

“If I felt like going to school every day would get them educated, get them good jobs, make them a good citizen, I’d support that,” he said. But that hasn’t happened, he said.

Hurst said the longer school year is hurting the tourism industry by cutting the season short. “The biggest growing dollars in the state of Alabama are tourism dollars,” he said.

Hurst said starting later also addresses worries about students riding non-air-conditioned buses in the August heat.

Hurst said if just 30 minutes were added to each typical school day, a full school year could be completed in 166 days.

Currently, each local board of education decides its own calendar, and the only requirement is that schools offer 1,080 hours of instruction during the school year. Students will attend school this year from between 174 to 180 days, depending on the district.

The last time schools were restricted by law was for the two-year period of 2012-13 and 2013-14. Under the Flexible School Calendar Act of 2012, Alabama schools couldn’t start school before the middle of August and had to end before the Friday before Memorial Day. That’s when requirements went from a rigid 180 days to requiring 1,080 instructional hours.

But education organizations pushed back, and the start and end date restrictions were not extended.

Survey responses were gathered from across the state, with 46% from north Alabama, 47% from south Alabama, and 7% from Madison County, where McBride said there was organized opposition against longer summers in previous years. Forty-one percent of survey participants had children in school, and 31% had grandchildren in school.

Three states---Virginia, Minnesota and Michigan---restrict school start dates to no earlier than Labor Day, according to the Education Commission of the States, a nonprofit policy organization. Another eight states have start dates spelled out in state law.

Hurst said the mandate is clear. “The survey’s been done,” he said. “We know what voters want.”