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While students in the District returned to school this week and their counterparts in Maryland will filter into classes over the next two weeks, kids and teenagers throughout most of Virginia are basking in what’s left of summer as they prepare for a post-Labor Day return.

Waiting until after Labor Day to open public schools is becoming less and less common across the country — heck, some counties in Georgia start as early as August 1 — as concerns spread that students are losing an edge relative to their international competitors. But for Virginia, giving students the extra vacation time isn’t so much a matter of rest and relaxation as it is one of sheer economics — and the fight over whether education or the economy comes first has been brewing for years.

Over the last two decades, Virginia public schools have been prohibited from opening before Labor Day because the state’s tourism industry wanted to ensure one last long weekend for family trips. Known as the “Kings Dominion law,” the legislative measure, passed in 1986, wouldn’t only allow for one last visit the amusement park located north of Richmond, but also for teenagers to get one more weekend of work in before heading back to school.

While this may sound like a case of a lobby throwing money around to get a law passed for its benefit, the numbers aren’t negligible. Earlier this year, the Virginia legislature passed a measure that would add a fourth exemption to the existing law, a discussion that made Virginia’s tourism industry none-too-happy. (A 2004 Post article reported that schools in 79 of the state’s 132 school districts enjoy exemptions to the Labor Day rule, most for weather-related reasons.) According to them, changing the start date for schools in the commonwealth could cost $389 million in lost wages and tourist spending as well as a $14 million decrease in tax collections.

But the push back against the Kings Dominion law seems to be getting more intense as more and more school districts demand the right to start before Labor Day. Earlier this year, Fairfax City Patch reported that the county was debating seeking its own exemption to open schools earlier. In August, the Fairfax Times editorialized that not only did the measure give Virginia students two fewer weeks to study for AP exams, but that it was an egregious example of the amusement park — owned by Anheuser-Busch — giving money to Virginia politicians.

The Roanoke Times has similarly come out against the law; so too did Jim LeMunyon, a Republican who represents parts of Fairfax and Loudoun counties. According to him, of the 20 states from Delaware to Florida to Texas (including those that similarly depend on tourism), only Virginia sticks to a post-Labor Day start. (Loudoun County schools will start on August 29 this year, having benefited from a weather-related exemption.)

Jason Johnson, a writer with the conservative blog Bearing Drift, may have made the best point when he wrote in February that “it will be difficult to finance public education without those trips to Kings Dominion, but it is also impossible to learn Hamlet, Mozart and the Pythagorean Theorem while on those trips to Kings Dominion.”

Of course, any change is likely to come slowly. Over the course of the 2010-2011 General Assembly session, up to 10 proposals to change the law were debated, but only one, mentioned above, passed. Another proposal was withdrawn after its sponsor learned that Gov. Bob McDonnell opposed any changes to the law.

For now, Virginia students will get to enjoy another few days off before heading back to school. One Virginian we spoke to added that there’s one more fringe benefit to the status quo — no lines for the rollercoasters.