Bruno is part of a "Save Our Summers" alliance of parents, grandparents, educational professionals and some summer-time recreation providers fighting year-round school. Local chapters carry names such as Georgians Need Summers, Texans for a Traditional School Year and Save Alabama Summers.
Camps, hotel operators and other summer-specific industries raise red flags about the potential economic effect.
The debate has divided parents and educators.
School days shorter than work days and summer breaks that extend to as many as 12 weeks in some areas run up against increasing political pressure from working households - 30 percent of which are headed by women. These families must fill the gaps with afterschool programs, day care, babysitters and camps.
"Particularly where there are single parents or where both parents are working, they prefer to provide care for three weeks at a time rather than three months at a time," Ballinger said.
The National Center on Time & Learning has estimated that about 1,000 districts have adopted longer school days or years.
Some places that have tried the year-round calendar, including Salt Lake City, Las Vegas and parts of California, have returned to the traditional approach. Strapped budgets and parental dissatisfaction were among reasons.
School years are extended based on three basic models:
-stretching the traditional 180 days of school across the whole calendar year by lengthening spring and winter breaks and shortening the one in the summer.
-adding 20 to 30 actual days of instruction to the 180-day calendar.
-dividing students and staff into groups, typically four, and rotating three through at a time, with one on vacation, throughout the calendar year.
At the heart of the debate is nothing less than the ability of America's workforce to compete globally.
The U.S. remains in the top dozen or so countries in all tested subjects. But even where U.S. student scores have improved, many other nations have improved much faster, leaving American students far behind peers in Asia and Europe.
Still, data are far from clear that more hours behind a desk can help.
A Center for Public Education review found that students in India and China - countries Duncan has pointed to as giving children more classroom time than the U.S. - don't actually spend more time in school than American kids, when disparate data are converted to apples-to-apples comparisons.
The center, an initiative of the National School Boards Association, found 42 U.S. states require more than 800 instructional hours a year for their youngest students, and that's more than India does.
Opponents of extended school point out that states such as Minnesota and Massachusetts steadily shine on standardized achievement tests while preserving their summer break with a post-Labor Day school start.
"It makes sense that more time is going to equate to more learning, but then you have to equate that to more professional development for teachers - will that get more bang for the buck?" said Patte Barth, the center's director. "I look at it, and teachers and instruction are still the most important factor more so than time."