School starts in August?
Pennsylvania schools started after Labor Day back in the day, except for some rural schools which began the week before Labor Day.
Start of school crept earlier in August as some Districts (we have 500 of them) added days to their calendars; the really big jump to around August 17-18 came when the Pennsylvania State School Assessment test were inaugurated.
Those tests are administered in mid to late April so Districts wanted to start early to allow more time to prepare for the d@mn test...which should really be like final exams in the last week of the school year.