Idaho and Maine schools are considering the future of fall 'spud

Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Feb 14, 2006 by Anne Wallace Allen Associated Press

BOISE, Idaho -- With machines doing more of the potato harvest work, some parents and educators want to rethink the tradition of the "spud break" -- an annual vacation in early fall that lets students help bring in the state's signature crop.

But the half-dozen districts that still have the break want to hang on to it.

"It's good for the kids," said Lon Harrington, chairman of a Snake River School Board committee that has been studying the matter for the past several months. Harrington, who harvested potatoes himself as a child, said it also helps farmers.

"At that time of year they need extra help," he said. "Even the large corporate farms don't have enough personnel to man the system."

Questions about spud break have arisen for years. The schools that take the break have to make up the time -- usually by extending the school year both in August and in June -- to provide the 180 days of school required by Idaho law. Some teachers argue that a break just weeks after the start of school disrupts learning and reduces scores on state tests students must take soon after they return to the classroom.

"You barely get them into school, they get the flow, and then they get out for two weeks," said Lisa Frost, a Blackfoot mother who served on the Snake River School Board committee with Harrington and who would like the district to drop the break for elementary students.

Over the years, spud breaks have disappeared in much of the southeastern Idaho potato country that once relied on them.

But five or six school districts still have them. Families use the time to take vacations; many teachers and students go hunting.

And many students work on farms.

"We would miss it," said Gene Place, who harvests 300 acres of potatoes on his farm in Hamer, in eastern Idaho, with the help of a half-dozen high school girls who sort dirt clods from potatoes -- and two teachers who drive trucks.

Harrington's committee surveyed 2,500 district households on the question and got back a disappointing 100 mixed responses. The committee also surveyed 600 of the district's high school students. All but five wrote back, and Harrington said most supported keeping the break in place -- even though it means the district doesn't have a spring break.

"They said, 'Don't do away with it; we've been doing harvest break for as long as the district has been in existence,' " Harrington said. "I would have to agree."

Others like the break for what it means about the place they call home.

"We're living in a valley full of small farmers," said Sue Mancaster, the head volleyball coach at Teton High School in Driggs. Mancaster, who grew up in suburban Evergreen, Colo., was surprised to learn about the harvest break, and initially annoyed because it cut into her volleyball season. But then she thought about the significance of the tradition and decided to support it.

"If they can't continue to make a living here, which presumably means helping with their harvesting, it's another thing that newcomers coming into the valley are pushing out of their traditions," Mancaster said of the farmers.

Potatoes have long shaped life in Idaho. Despite a dip in sales over the past decade, they're still the state's largest agricultural export, with sales of about $700 million to $800 million, said Frank Muir, president and CEO of the Idaho Potato Commission.

Large-scale potato farming began in Idaho about 70 years ago. Idaho grows about one-third of the potatoes consumed in the United States, Muir said.

Schools in agricultural areas all over the country have long let students out to work at harvest time. Students at Teton High School in eastern Idaho take a week or two off every fall to work on wheat, grain and beet crops.

"We have taken a survey of the farmers around and ranchers and found out the most viable time they can use the students," said principal Blaine McInelly, who himself worked the potato harvest from the age of 8 in his native Mackay during the 1960s.

"It's a great opportunity for the students to get out and learn some work ethic and understand agriculture," he said.

The potato-growing state of Maine also has a spud break. As in Idaho, some Maine schools are considering offering the break only to high school students because children under 12 can only work on their own families' farms.

In Idaho, it's hard to find an adult of a certain age who doesn't have a spud break story to tell.

"It's not an easy job," said Kathy Bollinger, chairwoman of the Fremont School District, who worked spud break at the age of 8 in the 1970s. "I remember digging potatoes when it was snowing."

McInelly worked in the days when the young children harvested the potatoes by hand into baskets and then sacks, and the older children loaded the sacks onto flatbed trucks.