While most students are just beginning a three-month summer break, students at our neighborhood year-round elementaries are heading back to school.
Dan D. Rogers Elementary completed its first year on a year-round curriculum, and Bonham and Fannin recently were approved for such a schedule and will begin their school year July 24.
“We believe it is better educationally not to have three months off in the summer,” says Rogers Principal Rex Cole. “Students forget what they have learned the year before.”
Students at year-round schools attend class the same number of days as students on a traditional calendar, but instead of a three-month summer break, they receive short intercessions throughout the year.
Students at year-round schools attend classes for 45 to 60 days and then have 15 to 20 days off. They also receive five to six weeks off at the end of the school year as a summer break. The short breaks help energize students and staff, Cole says.
Schools on traditional schedules spend the first six weeks of a new year reviewing old material, but this doesn’t happen in year-round schools, says Don Smith, who was principal at Reinhardt Elementary when it went year-round in 1992. He now works in DISD administration.
“Kids come back ready to learn,” Smith says. “They pick right up and go. They remember more.”
Attendance has increased at year-round schools, Smith says. There is less burnout, and parents tend to schedule doctor or dentist appointments during the breaks.
Schools also take advantage of the breaks, offering enrichment, such as art or computer literacy, and remedial courses during these vacation periods.
Penny Isom, a parent with two children at Rogers, says the year-round curriculum gives her family a chance to travel during the off-season. In the summer, popular vacation spots tend to be crowded and more expensive, she says.
In October, Isom and her husband Charlie took daughter Becky and son Trey camping at state parks in Arkansas. Becky just finished sixth grade and Trey finished fourth.
“I have loved it, because both the children are on the same schedule,” Isom says, “but next year, Becky will be in the seventh grade.”
Becky will move to Benjamin Franklin Middle School, which isn’t year-round.
Isom faces a common problem with year-round schools.
In DISD, 21 elementary schools have changed to a year-round schedule, but in the upper grades only Fred F. Florence Middle School, the Comprehensive Evening High School and the Metropolitan Educational Center have made the switch.
“Some parents who rely on older children to baby-sit younger children have had problems,” Smith says.
For the most part, though, parents have made adjustments and are happy with year-round schedules, Cole says.
Seventy percent of parents surveyed by Rogers’ faculty last year approved a year-round schedule, Cole says.
This year, the Board of Education required consent from 75 percent of parents in a school’s attendance zone before a switch to a year-round schedule was approved, Smith says.
One way schools have sold year-round education to parents is by promising it will improve scores on standardized and classroom tests.
But it’s too early to calculate the effect of year-round schools since DISD only introduced them three years ago, Smith says. It takes at least four years for a school to determine results, he says.
“Year-round is not the panacea,” Smith says. “It is not going to make everything great and wonderful, but it is an improvement.”
