I need light in the morning to get me up, so I want to shift things in winter - it's dangerous for my kids to be waiting out in the dark in the dead of winter for the bus (so we should shift dawn to earlier, or push back the start of school until after sunrise). But in the summer, having sunrise at 4 am when no one gets up that early to use the daylight is a waste, so I'd like to shift things even further as we approach the summer solstice.
With our current DST scheme, I feel they've moved Spring Ahead a few weeks too early - we are just getting to a nice time for dawn, and they go and move it! Wait until dawn is too early, and then reset it instead. When DH was trying to bike to work, it was always frustrating - just as he had enough daylight to safely bike to work on time, DST hit and pushed dawn off again.
While we are railing against antiquated programs that no longer make sense, why does our school year still conform to agrarian schedules? What percentage of the population is that important to now? Given the numbers that have to come up with summer childcare arrangements, wouldn't year round schools make more sense? Although in my area, I'd prefer to have a 4 or 6 week blizzard season break - just stay home and hunker down when the weather will be ugly (and enjoy holidays with the family) and skip the snow day roulette. Of course, climate change is throwing a monkey wrench in predicting when we get winter weather - we've had a relatively mild winter, until now. Last week they used 2 snow days for wind related power outages, and they've pre-emptively closed school for tomorrow.