Schools struggle with calendar
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Last updated 1/28/1997 at Noon
The board has been examining various school calendars to get maximum use of present facilities in the face of possible overcrowding. Under a "multi-track" schedule, a certain percentage of students would be in school while another group would be off.
One form of multi-tracking would have a third of students off at any given time while the others attended classes. This would, in effect, permit school facilities to accommodate an additional 33 percent in enrollment. The schools would operate the year around.
Elementary School Principal Tim Comfort, chairman of an alternative calendar study committee, reported Monday night that at present the school district is about 5 percent over capacity and has been increasing at more than 5 percent a year.
The committee, charged with recommending calendar options to the board, has been attempting to come up with a single-track schedule for all students that would permit the district to transition smoothly into a multi-track schedule if necessary.
Monday night the board reviewed six options based loosely on a 60/20 single track schedule, which, if applied strictly, would mean all students would be in class 60 days and off for 20 days.
Comfort acknowledged that pressure for observation of traditional holidays and breaks (including long summer breaks) compromised the 60/20 schemes beyond recognition.
So far, most thinking on the board and administration is that an alternative calendar would apply only to grades kindergarten through eight (K-8), and the high school grades would stay with the traditional calendar.
High school principal Dennis Dempsey told the board that multi-tracking would not work at a high school with less than 1,500 students. Parents and Dempsey did note, however, that multi-tracking could play havoc with athletics schedules, and the traditions of high school youngsters working during summer months.
Some parents objected to having the high school and lower grades on different schedules. This could, they said, work a hardship on families with youngsters on both schedules.
Board member Jan van den Berg wanted the board to focus on the impact on education of a year around schedule with short breaks. Research presented to the board over the past two years or more has indicated that a calendar with breaks of no more than six weeks has a positive effect on learning. There is greater retention and less time reviewing information when classes resume.
Van den Berg said, in effect, that an improvement in academic achievement is reason enough to go to a year around schedule with the shorter breaks.
There are arguments that such scheduling has not improved education, according to Comfort, but no evidence that such schedules harm education.
Some members of the audience said year round education has been tried by other school districts and later they returned to traditional schedules.
Comfort said virtually every one of the districts that went back to traditional schedules were originally forced by repeated defeats of bond issues to adopt multi-track scheduling and resumed traditional scheduling when new facilities were provided. Academic impacts of this type of scheduling was not a consideration.
Selecting alternative calendars for academic reasons requires looking at a different set of criteria, he implied, and single track or multi-track calendars designed to maximize learning can do just that while also serving the need to make better use of school facilities.
Van den Berg insisted that if shorter summer breaks of six weeks helps even five percent of the youngsters such scheduling should be pursued.
Comfort said that a "hard-line" approach on such scheduling will initially have less parental support, but, studies have shown, after a couple of years when people have adjusted, "they think it is not bad."
The school board has given itself until the February board meeting to adopt an alternative calendar at least for grades K-8. More committee suggestions are to be reviewed in the February meeting before the board acts. Chairman Bill Reed said the board will also seek public comment at that meeting.
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