Jan. 15, 2010

Year-round and traditional calendar choices for all families

Purpose

The Wake County school board approved a resolution Jan. 5 ending mandatory year-round calendar assignments beginning in 2010-2011. The purpose of this review is to help parents and others interested in the school system better understand the possible effects of that decision at individual schools and the district level. Wake Education Partnership is not endorsing or opposing the resolution. Its purpose in releasing this review is to help people better understand the topic so they can better follow or participate in the conversation.

This is the first in what the Partnership expects will be a series of topic reviews, prompted primarily by expected changes in the school system.

Overview

While some schools could convert from a year-round to traditional calendar with literally no immediate effect on any other schools, it is equally clear that conversions to a traditional calendar would leave many schools short of seats. The number of seats lost typically falls within a range of 100 to 250 seats per school. Those students would presumably need to be reassigned.

In estimating how many students could be affected overall, this review looked only at year-round schools where mandatory assignments outnumbered voluntary assignments by a ratio of at least three to one. These seemed the most likely to prefer a calendar conversion. About three dozen of the district’s 51 year-round schools meet that standard.

If all of those schools were to convert, which is unlikely, about 1,500 students would be immediately affected. That is because these students were placed in those schools specifically because they requested a year-round calendar.

But the total number affected within those schools would be closer to 3,800. That is because traditional-calendar schools hold fewer students than year-round schools and the difference can’t be covered by removing only the students who attend by virtue of having applied to the year-round program.

These figures, which are discussed below in more detail, are near the upper end of estimates if for no other reason than year-round calendars have proven popular at many schools. That is why it would surprise school officials if a large percentage of parents asked to convert their schools back to traditional calendars.

A survey of parents is currently underway to gauge family preferences for traditional or year-round calendars. It is important to understand that these surveys do not guarantee schools will be converted. The results are meant to serve as a guide for the school board, which will ultimately make the decision of what schools to convert.

It is “quite possible” the school board will need to reject requests to convert schools because of capacity problems and other issues, according to board Chairman Ron Margiotta. A best-case scenario for the board, he said, would be survey results suggesting no conversions are needed.

That is because a large number of conversions will create a large number of reassignments. The reassignments would be in addition to the second year of a three-year reassignment plan approved in 2009, which includes the opening of four new schools.

Much of the information used in this review is detailed in a 67-page report released to school board members Jan. 5. The heart of the report is a school-by-school breakdown of enrollment numbers that offer insights into which schools would be most significantly affected by an end to mandatory year-round assignments. It can be found here.

While parents are understandably focused on individual school calendars and whether conversions will trigger reassignments, equally important are the number of unresolved questions the board must address. Some of the issues were brought up immediately when the resolution to end mandatory year-round assignments was approved Jan. 5. Other questions have yet to be considered.

For example, the school board must decide:

• Whether to convert a school if that means the school will be immediately full and have no room for growth.
• Where to assign students who wish to attend a traditional calendar when the closest traditional calendar is already full.
• Where to assign students who wish to attend year-round schools when the nearest year-round is full.
• What to do if the number of individual calendar-change requests creates more bus runs and higher costs.
• What to do if the parents in an elementary school prefer a different calendar than the middle school it feeds.

These and other issues are addressed later in this review.

Understanding the details:

Capacity

To understand the possible effect of the resolution on any given school, it helps to understand how building capacity is calculated. To begin with, smaller and older schools are often less suited for efficient use of year-round calendars. Newer schools are often built with the year-round calendar in mind.

It’s also important to realize that just because your child’s class might have 29 kids in it, that does not mean every class can have 29 kids.

The state dictates class size averages. When a school district routinely exceeds those averages – as Wake did at the beginning of this year – the State Board of Education typically rejects class-size waiver requests. That forces the school to either hire another teacher or combine classes of different grade levels. In a year-round school, it is sometimes possible to combine classes from different tracks.
 
But mixed grade levels, teacher changes and track changes that are dictated after the first of the year are highly unpopular with parents. That makes it risky at best to fill a school without leaving room for some growth.

It is also necessary to understand that not every classroom in a school can be used all the time. In a smaller elementary, for example, as many as eight classrooms are typically set aside for special education classes, academically gifted classes, English as Second Language classes, music, art and other requirements.

Click here for a fuller description of how school capacity is determined. It will be a critical number in all of the upcoming discussions about calendar choice.

Utilization

For a year-round school, the rather bureaucratic-sounding term “utilization” essentially answers the question “Where do the students come from and do they fill all four tracks of a year-round school?” (Click here for an explanation of how year-round tracks are organized.)

If you want to know whether a school can be converted to a traditional calendar without triggering a large number of reassignments, you need to know whether current space is being fully utilized.

The school system’s report provides a percentage showing how fully a school would be utilized under each calendar. In some cases, either calendar will work. That is often because new year-round schools are purposely under capacity to leave room for growth.

In other cases, such as Leesville Road Elementary, (page 38 of the school system report) the school’s current enrollment would be 28% above its traditional calendar capacity.

To estimate how many students would be affected at any given school, the chart below assumes students who live in the base area of a school would want to remain at that school if it were converted. That is not always the case, as previous conversions from year-round calendars to traditional calendars have shown. But one of the biggest challenges in figuring out the effects of the new resolution – for school administrators and parents – is how to handle the many variables involved in the estimates.

There are 10 different categories of students listed within the enrollment of every school such as students who live in the base area, students who have applied to attend, transfer students, those who left for magnet program, those who left for traditional calendars, etc. Each group is expected to respond differently to any calendar conversion. Even more difficult to predict is how each group will respond now that every family has the right to request a different school if they don’t prefer the calendar at their assigned school.

That means the results below should be taken for what they are – general estimates.
While it is tempting to focus on the district totals, what matters most to parents is the likelihood of reassignments should a school be converted. What matters most to the school board is whether it can afford to give parents what they want.

To get an idea of what schools will pose the biggest challenge to convert, focus on the category of seats lost in the conversion. That is where students are most likely to be displaced.

Source: Four-Track Year-Round School Capacity and Utilization in WCPSS (1/5/10)
See notes below*

Unresolved issues:

As mentioned above, board members won’t have the information they are requesting from parents until after the survey period closes Jan. 25. The first public discussion of the results is scheduled for Feb. 2, with recommendations about what schools to convert no sooner than Feb. 16. Among the unresolved issues the board must address:

• Deciding on the appropriate response rate for any given school before changes are made. The current thinking is that no school would be converted unless a minimum of 33% of the parents respond to the online survey. But if the result is close – say 52% to 48% -- and only one-third of parents voted, several board members have already said they feel uneasy about making changes. The issue could be addressed as soon as the Jan. 19 meeting.

• The board must decide how far away it is willing to send a student if a family wants to exercise its new right to attend a different calendar than the one in their assigned school. What if a student wants a year-round calendar but the next closest school is full? What if the second- and third-closest are also full? This is the situation in parts of southwest Wake County where rapid growth has filled many year-round schools. This also could be addressed at the Jan. 19 meeting.

• If a school has some room, but not enough to accommodate demand, who gets priority – a student who already attends the school by virtue of a year-round application or a student who lives close by in the base area?

• Should feeder patterns be considered? If nearby elementary schools are on a year-round schedule, then the middle school almost has to remain on a year-round schedule to accommodate rising sixth graders. To a lesser extent, the reverse is true when elementary schools on traditional calendars feed into a year-round middle school.

• If a school is converted to a traditional calendar and exceeds capacity sooner than predicted, should it be converted back to year-round? Would it make more sense to bring in modular classrooms in a case like that? A set of eight classrooms costs about $830,000 to purchase and install.

• How long can the board wait if the process bogs down? Principals are typically told in March how many teachers they should plan on hiring for the coming year. Parents typically want to know their child’s schedule by early spring at the latest so they can arrange day-care, summer camps and family vacations. The more schools that get converted, the more difficult it will be to wrap up all the questions before April.

As noted above, some of the answers to unresolved questions could come as soon as Jan. 19. It is likely that other questions will surface along the way and take longer to answer. Regardless, most of the questions – if not all – will need to be considered within the realities outlined in this study.

Links:

2009-2010 Year-Round School Locations

Four-Track Year-Round School Capacity and Utilization (Full report)
Page 1:  Year-round school capacity: District Summary
Page 3:  Brief history of year-round schools in Wake
Page 5:  The role of year-round schools as part of the system’s building program
Page 7:  School capacity models
Page 11: Year-round vs. traditional capacities by school (summary)
Page 17: Year-round vs. traditional capacities by school (detailed)

*Table calculation notes

Base students attending school: The number of base students attending the YR school.
Students at school via year-round application:  Those who applied to attend the school as part of the district’s year-round schools program. These students would  likely have to leave if a school is converted.
Traditional Calendar Capacity:  Capacity as calculated by the school system.
Current enrollment :  Enrollment as of Dec. 11, 2009.
Seats lost in conversion : The difference between current school enrollment and traditional capacity
YR students displaced in underenrolled schools: Some underenrolled schools would have enough seats for current YR applicants, but the YR applicants would lose their program and likely leave the school.

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Wake Education Partnership is a 501(c)(3) non-profit created in 1983 to support public schools, in part by educating the community on current school issues. Most of its financial support comes from local business. For questions about this report, contact Tim Simmons, VP of Communication (tsimmons@wakeedpartnership.org) or Julie Crain, VP of Programs. (jcrain@wakeedpartnership.org ). This topic review can also be found at our website, www.wakeedpartnership.org, under the tab titled News Center.