http://www.theherald-nc.com/education/story/9991.html SMITHFIELD — The Johnston County Board of Education is looking at a year-round calendar for three schools with many at-risk students. A committee has been studying a year-round calendar for Selma, South Smithfield and West Smithfield elementary schools. Under the calendar, students would begin school the first week of August, have a two-week break after the first and third nine weeks and a three-week break after the second nine weeks. During one week of each break, students would return to school for help in getting ahead or catching up in their studies. “The bottom line is that this is an underlying motive for us to give our schools that have high poverty or some challenges in meeting the needs of our students more opportunities of time and resources,” said Superintendent Anthony Parker. Finally, students would have seven weeks of summer break. In documentation to the school board, the committee noted that a year-round calendar proved successful in Alamance and Union counties. Alamance has three schools on the year-round calendar, while Union has five. An Alamance County elementary school went from the lowest-performing to the highest-performing Title I school in its district. (Title 1 schools receive federal dollars because they have large numbers of poor students.) A year-round calendar would cost an additional $60,000 per school. The costs include busing, wages, heating and cooling and classroom materials for the three weeks that students would return to school during breaks. Grant dollars could cover half of the costs; the schools would use state dollars for the rest. The three schools will decide whether to ask the board of education for permission to adopt a year-round calendar.
I was at a county wide meeting last year, when this issue was raised. Dr Parker said, IIRC, that the data doesn't show the desired effect of increasing academic scores. This was when he was still JoCo's Golden Boy. I am unconvinced that throwing more money at those areas will make the desired impact. There are several factors in these lower performing schools. No doubt, the socio-economic data will play a huge factor in the non school settings for these children. I would wager that in most of those households, there are many single parents who employed at the lower end of the wage scale. Even if both parents are present, the job requirements will still mena long hours for little pay, thus affording little time to interact with the children, help with homework, and in yet others, a difficulty with the academic content. Before we allow the camel's nose of year round schooling to enter our tent, perhaps we need to examine in detail the options available, and the set of data that both supports and refutes the expressed basis for year round schooling. Academic needs are different than a need to better utilize schools, 4 tracks per year versus letting the school remain under utilized during the summers. If it's the cost of building and maintaining schools, that's an entirely separate argument.
My kids love year round school. I do as well, just those two weeks off can be difficult for parents getting daycare that works on the same trackout.
Don't have any kids young enough but out of curiosity, did they ever solve the problem of children from the same home on different tracks?
Bring on the year round school schedule. I was in year round school when I lived in Saudi...loved it.
I don't know about that yet.... right now one is in 3rd and the other in 5th. They go to the same school this year, but next year my oldest will have a traditional calendar while the younger will be on year round.........Don't know what I will do then. Seems like the school would have Middle and Elementary on the same type of schedules.... Sometimes, Wake County makes me wonder if they even know what they are doing!
