YEAR-ROUND SCHOOLING

Changing a school district's calendar to facilitate year-round schooling would be a major undertaking for any school district. One must wonder if such drastic change needs to be made if there are few academic advantages to such a change. Should a district seek to change from the traditional school calendar to a year round calendar without substantial evidence that such a calendar would improve student achievement? What obstacles would the district face, and more importantly, what benefits would be gained by changing from a traditional school calendar to a year-round schedule? Other than some isolated cases, most literature does not show a correlation between a year-round school calendar and increased academic success of the students. There is not enough evidence to prove to a district that year-round schooling would increase academic achievement and save on over-all costs to the district. Year-Round Schooling 3 Chapter I – Introduction Free public education began in the United States in the middle of the 1800s. At that time, far more than half the population lived in rural areas and farming was a major occupation for fifty to sixty percent of the nation (Kennedy, Cohen, & Bailey, 2010). According to Juliet Lapidos (2008) other factors also played a major role. Lapidos stated, “Attendance was below 50% in the summer months and physicians feared students would spread diseases common during the heat of the summer” (p. 1). Buildings being poorly ventilated, student and teacher burnout and the wealthy vacationing during the summer were other traditional reasons for schools to be closed during the summer months (Lapidos). Over the years, the United States gradually became an urban country. The 1920 census showed for the first time in American history that over fifty percent of the population lived in cities (Kennedy, Cohen, & Bailey, 2010). The dawn of the twentieth century also ushered in new technologies that changed farming. Tractors began to replace draw animals and threshers and reapers made the previous work of many people able to be accomplished by only a few. These advancements continued to fuel the trend of families moving to cities and suburbs in search of work they could no longer find on rural farms. Because farming continued to make technological leaps that reduced the necessity of farmhands, fewer people needed to stay on farms throughout the nineteen hundreds. By the year 2000, fewer than three percent of the American population listed agriculture or farming as their main occupation (Kennedy, Cohen, & Bailey, 2010). Although there has been a major population shift in the United States and a great decline in the number of people employed as farmers, the school calendar has not changed in most public school districts. Most schools end Year-Round Schooling 4 within a week or two of Memorial Day in May and do not resume until the week or two around Labor Day in September. Many aspects of education, including best practice and methodology, have changed since the introduction of free public education. The basic study of reading, writing, and arithmetic has been altered and enhanced several times throughout the twentieth century. Whether it was because of the nuclear and space race with the Soviet Union in the 1940s and 1950s, racial desegregation, integration, and forced busing of the 1960s and 1970s, the new computer technology of the 1980s or the explosion of the internet in the 1990s and the twenty-first century, subject matter may still be consistent but the delivery of the subject matter has changed drastically. As with other institutions, every time a crisis or technological change has occurred, the dynamics of the institution changes, either to counteract the new difference or to strength the institution. The reason the school calendar was originally set up in the current format has changed significantly. Not only what is being taught but also what is required of the current students in our schools has changed markedly over time. The school calendar has remained the most unchanged area in education. Sault Ste. Marie Area Public Schools is looking for ways to improve student academic achievement and saving on fiscal costs. Would changing to yearround schooling help the Sault Schools achieve either of these goals? Statement of the Problem Schools have run on the same calendar for over one hundred and fifty years. Students go to school for nine months and then have three months off. This much time off seems like it would hinder student learning, and therefore, progress and achievement. In many classes and grades, the first month is spent simply reviewing the previous year’s content and not exploring Year-Round Schooling 5 new curriculum. With curriculum changing and requirements becoming more and more rigorous there is less time available in the fall for review, and if current trends continue, this review time will decrease not increase. Although it may seem obvious that changing to year-round schooling would fix this problem that is not necessarily the case. Many barriers are involved when changing a school calendar for a community. The current economy is a major consideration when deciding whether or not to change the traditional schedule. Many students have summer jobs which help fuel the local economy and satisfy the needs of employers while providing services to customers. Therefore, the economic cost of altering the calendar and having school open all year is a major factor when districts take up the idea of year-round school. Teacher contracts pose another challenge to implementing a new calendar. Though the number of instruction days and the number of students per class in a year may not be determined by faculty contracts, teacher wages and benefits are. A decided change in the school year would necessitate a new contract that would need to be negotiated, and this negotiation might make the bottom line of year-round school too costly for a district or community. Another major impact is the simple change of tradition. Considering that most people do not take to change very easily or quickly, to alter something as ingrained as the school year could be a task of tantamount proportion. Whether it is a same spring break each year or the scheduling of a major sporting event or community event, most schools have very rich traditions and strong ties with the local community. Changing the calendar could have a major impact on these traditions and cause more pressures on communities that already have obstacles to community cohesion and