Year-Round Schooling. Why? Why Not?

    Being the dork that I am, I have always wondered where the idea for scholastic summer vacation came from. I mean, I knew that at one point in time there was no extended vacation, and then, magically…there was! Please don’t get me wrong, I never complained, but the reasoning, at least as it was told to me, never made sense to my addled brain. The idea that youngsters had to help out on the farm? Really? So, the city-kids catch a break just because Mom and Pop farmer needed help? Sounded fishy to me. Anyway, The Breakfast Club guys dared me to write about this after it came up one Sunday morning because I kept asking why kids don’t go to school all year-round. I was hesitant because I knew it would take more reading than usual. I also felt that I was being taken advantage of since two of these dopes are public school TEACHERS! And most importantly, golf season is almost over! But being the cagey guy I am, I then made a lane change and became fascinated by the idea of which is better: Summer Vacation, or Year-round School? Because, you know me…anything for my millions of readers! You’re an idiot!  I know… So, here it is. 

    “While current data remains inconclusive, K–12 year-round calendars — or what are sometimes called balanced school calendars — may appeal to districts seeking academic recovery relief.” That’s my thesis! Pretty good, huh?

    Believe it or not, year-round schooling has grown remarkably in the United States for K-12 establishments, over the past 3 decades, from a total enrollment of around 400,000 students in the mid-1980s to over 2 million by the early 2000s. Despite this growth, some districts have since abandoned year-round calendars and returned to the traditional model. Now, as schools are STILL managing post-pandemic learning recovery, the topic of year-round schooling has, yet again, circled back into the K-12 landscape. With many competing perspectives on the topic, it may be difficult to understand what is best for students, families, and educators. District leaders will obviously want to carefully weigh the costs and benefits of year-round calendars before adopting such a change. So, here are some considerations from The Golf Room, again, based on reading and discussions with people in the know, when determining if a K-12 year-round calendar would meet a district’s financial, academic, or cultural needs.

    So, in the end...I asked myself: “Self? How does a year-round or balanced calendar work?” The term year-round or balanced school calendar, in the K-12 landscape, is defined as a modified educational schedule that groups instructional days into smaller units with more frequent breaks throughout the year. In most cases, year-round schedules do not add days of instruction to the approximately 180 days typical in a traditional school year. 

    Within this framework are Single-Track Systems vs. Multi-Track Year-Round Systems. Both with pros and cons. A single-track structure provides a single calendar for a more continuous period of instruction, followed by the traditional summer vacation. All students and faculty follow the same curriculum and vacation schedule. Schools typically adopt single-track year-round calendars to lessen K-12 academic recovery challenges. 

    Multi-track year-round education enables a school to make greater use of its facilities by staggering the attendance schedules of the students, teachers, and staff by groups so that one takes their break while the others study and work. This model is most often used to address overcrowding or resource management. 

    What Are The Benefits of K-12 Year-Round Schooling? While a major motivation for adopting a year-round calendar involves addressing academic recovery and promoting stability to aid student well-being, funding typically remains a huge and legitimate concern. The California Department of Education’s Year-Round Education Program Guide and American University’s School of Education highlight some potential cost savings of year-round education. Districts should weigh their own financial standings against these findings to evaluate the following potential financial benefits:  

    Reduced Facilities Costs: Multi-track models are a promising way to expand facilities for higher enrollment, without spending substantial amounts of capital funding. For example, in a four-track system in a year-round calendar of 1,000 K-12 students, only 3 groups of about 330 students would occupy a campus at any given time. Moreover, this structure leaves room to boost enrollment by 25% with little financial investment. Schools could also avoid costs of facility repair resulting from extended periods of shut down, including vandalism. 

    Potential Efficiencies for Employees and Families: Intermittent breaks may reduce teacher burn out, which would reduce the need for substitute teachers. Administrators may also find it easier to manage benefits that are usually calculated on a 12-month basis. In addition, some families may also benefit from fewer childcare costs. 

    Student Achievement Gains: Beyond financial benefits, advocates for year-round schedules argue that it can improve student achievement. They suggest that such systems reduce teacher burnout and decrease the likelihood that students will become stressed, act out, or drop out, leading to better student retention and achievement rates. In Virginia, one teacher in the Hopewell City Public School District said they feel relief when working in a year-round calendar, because there is always another break just around the corner.  

    When considering a balanced calendar as a better way to serve vulnerable students, some advocates have made the case that year-round schooling improves chances of success for low-income students, and/or English language learners. Some studies on COVID-19 recovery issues estimate that some students lost one third of a school years’ worth of education to the peak of the pandemic. Many families lack the resources to afford private means of bridging this gap. In an Associated Press feature of two Virginia schools and their process of considering year-round schools, many Spanish-speaking parents spoke positively of the prospect, wanting their children to better their English reading and writing skills.  

    And What Are The Drawbacks of a Year-Round School System?

    In contrast to the benefits, a year-round calendar system can also bring several new complications to a district’s financial and organizational state, and its community. The increased cost of implementing a K-12 balanced calendar system appears to be modest. However, it has clearly discouraged some schools from employing such a system. The primary costs are remedial or supplemental instruction offered during intersession breaks, but existing research makes note of several other areas where year-round education requires greater resources, depending on the type of schedule implemented, including: 

    Transition Costs: Enacting such a substantial change within a school takes a lot of teamwork, research, and planning, so the cost of administrative planning and staff development may be high. In some cases, year-round calendars may require outside consultation or overtime.  

    Operational Costs: Some schools will need to expand their office and administrative staff. Many will also have to cover increased utilities, maintenance, and transportation costs. 

    Community Related Drawbacks

    Family Scheduling Challenges: Some argue that year-round schedules place a burden on families due to more irregular vacation schedules. Vacations become even harder to schedule in a multi-track calendar where different children within the same family could end up on different schedules. High school students may also find it harder to earn their own money as they will have fewer summer employment opportunities.  

    Employee Impacts: Organizational difficulties for teachers and staff seem to arise more frequently with multi-track versus single-track calendars. Because school facilities are being used by different groups at separate times, teachers must often become mobile. The lack of a long summer vacation can also prevent teachers from enrolling in professional development courses. 

    Extracurricular Activity Obstacles: For single-track schedules, extracurricular events may sometimes occur during intersession breaks, which requires advance planning by administrators for transportation and other needs. However, multi-track calendars pose more substantial scheduling complications. For example, an individual participating in sports in a multi-track school may have other members of their team on different tracks, making it hard to coordinate practice sessions. Additionally, even if students within a year-round system can coordinate their schedules, they may still be out-of-sync with other schools in a district, potentially posing obstacles in terms of scheduling extracurricular competitions. 

    K–12 School Calendar Best Practices and Bias  

    Overall, the contemporary research that is public and available on the internet, on the benefits of year-round schooling remains inconclusive. However, COVID-era studies suggest that a year-round, or balanced calendar, may be particularly effective in lower income or multilingual communities, or communities with limited English proficiency. Anecdotal evidence also suggests shorter, intermittent breaks throughout the entire year support teacher well-being.  

    Employee and community support are crucial when considering any district scheduling changes. With over 50% of teachers planning to leave the profession sooner than intended (and that is an entirely different essay), many districts cannot afford to make decisions that may result in more teacher loss. 

    Additionally, district leadership must consider how, political and personal vantage points influence attitudes toward year-round schooling. For instance, families who have the means to attain private academic assistance or take extended vacations may have different priorities than those with less expendable income. Districts should utilize survey research and townhall-style meetings to understand various perspectives, ensuring all parents and caregivers have opportunities to be included in the conversation. 

    Financially, some K-12 districts may find multi-track year-round calendars appealing, to maximize the use of available facilities and reduce the need for new construction. However, additional administrative and instructional costs, such as intersession support for struggling students, should be factored into any financially based decision to adopt year-round schooling. These additional costs, however, may be mitigated by federal funding available to schools within low-income communities.  

    Look, the summer vacation is a relatively new thing that started in America around the turn of the century; and it was not because of wanting kids to help on the farm. The reasons have not changed a lot within the context of the above discussions: It gave opportunities for teachers to brush up and get smarter about certain subjects, etc. It also gave everyone a nice break. And, because air-conditioning was still on the horizon, the heat in many cities made the decision for them. And by the time for standardization came around, the powers-that-be decided to keep the status quo, as it were, and give everybody the summer off.

    I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel here. From Colonial times on, kids were going to school 220+ days a year! Oh, my god!!! Now they go, what...180? And as much as I would like to blame teachers unions and their god-awful leadership, I can’t blame them for everything...can I? What I think I’m trying to figure out is, if this particular option might help our kids not forget what they learned in 5th grade when they start 6th grade, and the teacher has to waste valuable weeks if not months, reminding them. 

    This balance of factors, and no doubt some that I have missed, explains why year-round schooling has yet to become a popular choice within the K–12 landscape (although 10% of school districts in the U.S. currently use year-round schooling). The lack of definitive answers in the data and perspectives highlights the unique nature of this issue. However, unique circumstances may require unconventional solutions. School leaders should not entirely dismiss the benefits of year-round schooling for certain communities in need of strategic reform. If, for no other reason, than kids are kidding progressively dumber, from an academic standpoint. Americans used to pride themselves on the adage that we would try anything, within reason, to fix something that is not working. Well, I can make a pretty good argument that our public school system is nor working. Would it really hurt to try? 

Write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com