Even if the calendar says there is another month and a half or so left in the season, summer essentially ends this weekend for thousands of Gwinnett County students.

Barring the unlikely event that there is any major, typically off the wall, school-canceling catastrophe that only a kid could dream of — like, say, a freak August blizzard or an unexpected alien invasion over the weekend — the 2019-2020 school year will begin Monday.