The county I teach in is starting to discuss going to year round school. I have never really been around anywhere that does that, so I would love to hear from some people who live in districts where they have year round school. I’d especially like to hear opinions from anyone with experience in both year round and traditional schools so that I can make a more informed opinion.
For the record, I have a 2nd grade daughter, so it will affect me as a parent, and I teach at the high school level.
I’m unsure what you mean, could you explain a little more?
Do you mean the schools are in use year round, running two complete populations through in that time? Sept - Feb, Mar - Aug?
Or do you mean, the school year runs Sept - Sept? If so, what type of holidays do they get throughout the year? Christmas? Spring Break? Summer Break? No chance for a family vacation together to visit relatives, say?
I did a couple years at an all year school many decades ago.
Speaking as a kid - I was the wierdo who actually liked it. There was always a short vacation coming up soon, no long summer to get bored in, and no weeks of refresher before getting back into the meat of class. We also had uniforms, so no worrying about what to wear every day either.
I really like it, and my kid seems to like it too. She’s never been to a traditional-calendar school, so she doesn’t know the difference, but it seems to work for her. As **aruvqan **says, having shorter (but still substantial) vacations come frequently is nice, and it prevents summer brain drain and boredom. My child is on a general schedule of 9 weeks on, 3 weeks off, but breaks sometimes run into holidays, so for instance she’ll be off for 5 weeks over December and January.
I have to confess that I adore having vacation time in October, when it’s ideal to hit Disney World as far as weather and crowding!
Our school has four “tracks,” or groups of students, each on a slightly different schedule. So at any given time, three tracks are in school, and one is on break. This was done to help cope with crowding - you only need a school big enough to handle 75% of your population at a time.
The drawbacks are:
We have a year-round schedule in our school district for the elementary schools. Middle and high schools are on the traditional schedule.
Each student in the elementary grades is assigned to one of 4 tracks – A, B, C or D. At any given time, 3 of the 4 tracks are in school, and the fourth is “off-track.” The school year starts at the beginning of August and goes through the end of June, with everyone off for the month of July.
At the beginning of the year, tracks A, B and C start class and track D is off. After 3 weeks, track D comes on and A goes off. Three weeks later, A comes back and B goes off, etc., so that each track has a schedule of 9 weeks on and 3 weeks off for the school year.
Advantages:
[ul]
[li]Budget savings – In theory the district can have 25% fewer schools/classrooms.[/li][li]There are studies that show kids retain more if they have a series of short breaks during the year, rather than one long summer break.[/li][/ul]
Disadvantages:
[ul]
[li]Trying to plan family vacations can be a challenge if your children are on different tracks, or if you have older children in middle or high school. They try to keep all kids in the same family on the same track, but can’t always do it.[/li][li]Creates challenges in arranging for day care for working parents[/li][li]Teachers and students don’t have the continuity of using the same classroom, because they come back to a different room than the one they left.[/li][/ul]
Thanks for the responses so far! From what I understand, they are talking about going to a 9 weeks in school, then 3 weeks off schedule, with a 6 week summer. I’m thinking we may start the school year around the begining of August. This year, on a traditional schedule, we started August 13, and they may push it back to Aug 1. It would most likely be for all grade levels.
I have heard of schools doing the tracking, but haven’t heard any rumors about that here. I have heard rumors about the elementaries doing enrichment during the off times, but I don’t know how true that is or what types of things they would offer.
Years ago when I was in college, one of the poorer elementary schools in my county got a grant to do a year round schedule. They actually gave it as an option, so the school was running both schedules. It was reported that about 2/3 chose to go year round, with most of the ones choosing traditional doing it because they had middle/high school kids and wanted them on the same schedule. They did some kind of optional enrichment classes during vacations. It was highly praised, but the grant was only 3-5 years long, so it didn’t keep up. I wish now that I had paid more attention to what was going on!
I know what I think about it, but I also know my opinion is very theoretical. I’ve never been around it. It sounds very good to me, and I love the idea of breaks more frequently, but really just wonder how it works in practice.
I was on almost exactly this system in grades K-4, then switched to summers off. Year-round was better. I liked the (perceived) frequency of vacations, and sometimes the three-week vacation would run into what was then called Christmas or Easter break and we’d get 4 or 5 weeks off! Whee! Our year started in July.
PandaKid did a stint in a year-round school; she loved going a few weeks and then having 3 weeks off. She was only there for 1 semester, though (fall) so she never went to school in the middle of summer; not sure how she’d have felt about that.
She’s currently in traditional school and is ok with that too. It can be easier to have your kid in traditional because you only have to figure out childcare for the summer instead of every 9 weeks for 3 weeks at a time. 'Round our parts there are tons of awesome track-out camps but they’re expensive as hell.
FWIW one of my coworkers did year-round until high school and says he preferred year-round.
As a high school teacher, I would hate teaching in a year round school. I need my long summer break to recover from the school year that just ended and then start preparing for the next one.
Ditto, minus the uniforms. However, decades ago I am going to guess it was more common for one parent to be home most of the time; I don’t know how needing child-care at various times of the year will work out for dual-income families, so that might be a challenge. Otherwise, it’s a lot better than it sounds, for the above-mentioned reasons.
My sons were in a system where out of a 12 week cycle, all students were off three. They came back to a different classroom. This allowed four classes in each grade with ony three classrooms. Everyone had a week at Christmas and a week in the summer between school years. There was some awkwardness - one group started the year, went three weeks and took a break and then ended with a six week session.
It worked great for our family, nine weeks in and three off. Extended vacation during each of the seasons (we did a skiing week). Both my wife and I had jobs that allowed us flexibility on our vacation time. We had friends who weren’t as lucky - teachers in a traditional schedule. The teachers had the same three weeks off.