Wake Education Partnership presents "Wake FYI"
 

FOR YOUR INFORMATION: Year-Round Schools

For more than 15 years, the Wake County Public School System has included year-round schools as options for parents and students in our community. While the school district has been lauded in the past for providing this choice, it has recently been sharply criticized for considering wide-scale conversion of existing schools to multi-track year-round calendars as a way to deal with the enormous growth in student enrollment. In this edition of Wake FYI, we take a look a closer look at year-round schools.
 

Year-Round 101

  • What is a year-round school?
    A year-round school is one which takes the required number of school days and reconfigures them to provide instruction throughout the full calendar year with smaller and more frequent breaks. Students in year-round schools attend the same number of days as they would in traditional calendar schools (in N.C. this is 180 days) and have the same number of vacation days.
  • What is the purpose of year-round schools?
    There can be multiple purposes for implementing a year-round school calendar. The two most often cited are:
      o To increase the retention of knowledge and skills from one school year to the next, thereby reducing review time at the start of the school year. There are studies which show a slight increase in student achievement (including retention of knowledge) in year-round schools. It is important to note that there are many studies which show no difference in achievement between traditional and year-round students.
      o To increase the capacity of a school facility. Using a multi-track year-round calendar can increase the number of students which can use a facility by 20-33%.
  • What effects are reported for schools on some type of a year-round calendar?
    Research has noted several tangential outcomes, both positive and negative. The degree to which these effects occur can vary greatly based on several factors, including whether the school is on a single-track or multi-track calendar. The outcomes include:
      o Slight increase in both student attendance and student attitudes toward school;
      o Increased opportunities for academic assistance and enrichment events during the breaks (primarily on single-track schedules);
      o Difficulty in scheduling professional development opportunities for teachers;
      o Increase in administrator burnout (especially in multi-track schedules);
      o Greater wear and tear on school facilities and more difficulty in scheduling maintenance and renovations; and,
      o Development of more positive teacher and parent attitudes towards year-round schedules once they had experience with the schedule (including parent reporting that scheduling vacations and childcare was not as difficult as had been previously perceived).





  • Are there issues involving year-round schools we need more information about?
    There are several important issues for which there is either a lack of solid research, or multiple or conflicting results. Some examples include:
      o The effects on recruitment/retention of teachers and administrators at year-round schools, particularly when schools are converted, and particularly for teachers whose subjects require them to teach on all of the tracks (such as physical education or arts teachers);
      o The increased cost for operating year-round schools; and,
      o The increased cost in maintenance of facilities at year-round schools.
  • Are there different types of year-round schools?
    There are two primary types of year-round schools: single-track and multi-track. The main difference between these two types is whether all children in the school follow the same schedule of when they are in class versus on break.
      o In multi-track schools students are assigned to a track, often one of four total tracks, and three of the four tracks are in school at any one time with the remaining track on vacation. View the multi-track year-round calendar used in Wake County.
      o In single-track schools, all students in a school are on the same instructional and vacation schedule. View an example of a single track year-round calendar being used in Beaufort, S.C.
  • When did year-round schools start?
    There have been year-round schools in the United States for over a century. The first year-round school opened in Indiana in 1904. Currently, 46 states have some form of year-round schools.
Public Year-Round Schools in the United States: 2004-05
  • Why are there so few year-round high schools?
    High schools can be more difficult to run on a year-round calendar, particularly multi-track calendars, due to the challenges of scheduling extracurricular activities and being able to provide an extensive slate of course offerings to all students in every track.
  • Where are year-round schools most popular?
    Top 5 States for Year-Round (2004-05)
    Total Number of
    Year-Round Schools
    Total Year-Round Enrollment
    California
    1,518
    1,323,622
    Arizona
    179
    124,609
    Hawaii
    169
    113,507
    Kentucky
    162
    70,116
    Nevada
    118
    95,838

 

History of Year-Round Schools in Wake County

  • The “firsts” in Wake County:
      o Year-round schools were first proposed by the Wake County Manager and Chair of the County Commissioners in 1987-88.
      o Kingswood Elementary, the first year-round school in Wake County Public School System (WCPSS), and in North Carolina, opened in 1989.
      o In 1991, Morrisville Elementary, the first multi-track year-round school in Wake County, opened.
      o In 1996, Green Elementary became the first WCPSS school to convert from a traditional to a year-round calendar.
Growth in WCPSS Year-Round Student Enrollment
  • Currently, parents with children whose base school is on a traditional calendar but who want their children to attend a year-round school have two options:
      1) They can apply to be accepted into that school as part of the magnet/year-round program for that school. This can be done at any time during the year.
      2) They can apply for a transfer from their assigned school to a school with a year-round calendar. The transfer process begins once formal assignments are sent to parents/guardians for the next school year. In Wake County, transfer applications are currently being accepted. All transfer applications must be postmarked by June 1 in order to be considered for the 06-07 school year. Parents whose children are assigned to a year-round school but who want a traditional calendar can also apply for a transfer.
  • If a student applies and is accepted into a magnet or year-round program, transportation is provided. If a student transfers to another school, transportation is typically the responsibility of the student’s parents/guardians, although there are exceptions to this rule.
  • One high school in WCPSS operates on a modified calendar – Southeast Raleigh Magnet High School. This calendar is a mixture of the traditional and year-round calendars in that the school year starts in late July, but there is still a seven week summer holiday, and there are several lengthier breaks during the school year.
Future of Year-Round Schools in Wake County
  • In the 2006-07 school year WCPSS will have 20 year-round schools.
  • On May 16 the Wake County Board of Education approved a plan which would convert up to 20 additional elementary schools to a multi-track year-round calendar for the 2007-08 school year. It is possible that several middle schools may be converted, too.
  • This plan is part of the school construction plan which will be presented to the Wake County Board of Commissioners to establish a bond referendum for November.
  • The schools which will be converted will be announced by the Board of Education in June. It is expected that these schools will be in the high growth areas of Wake County – the western and southern parts of the county, and the northern parts of Raleigh.
  • In past months the Board of Education had considered proposals to convert more than double that number of elementary and middle schools to multi-track year-round calendars. Included in those proposals was the possibility of moving high schools to calendars that would better align with the multi-track year-round calendars.
 

For More Information on Year-Round Schools
 

Calendar 411

• June 1: The last meeting of the Blue Ribbon Committee, which is examining Wake County’s long-term facilities needs. At this meeting the committee is scheduled to approve its report.

• June 1: The date by which 2006-07 WCPSS school transfer requests must be postmarked to be considered. Transfer request forms can be downloaded (in English and Spanish) from the WCPSS site.

• June 5 and 19: The Wake County Board of Commissioners will hold its regularly scheduled meetings at which it is expected to vote on the amount for the November bond referendum (June 5) and the FY2007 budget, which includes the operating budget request for WCPSS (June 19).
 

Sources:
- “Year-Round School Gives Kids a Boost, Duke Expert Says.” August 2004 release from Duke University. Accessed at: http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2004/08/boost_0804_print.htm
- Naylor, Charlie. Do year-round schools improve student learning? An annotated bibliography and synthesis of the research. BCTF Research and Technology Division, May 1995. Accessed at: http://www.bctf.bc.ca/ResearchReports/95ei03/
- Bemis, Amy and Elisabeth Palmer. Year-Round Education. A literature review from the University of Minnesota’s Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement. 1998 Accessed at: http://education.umn.edu/carei/Reports/docs/Year-round.pdf
- Year-Round Education in the Wake County Public School System: A Historical Perspective. Wake County Public School System. Accessed at: http://www.wcpss.net/history/year_round/index.html
- Hui, T. Keung and Ryan Teague Beckwith. “Poll finds school bonds a bitter pill.” The News and Observer. May 14, 2006. Accessed at: www.newsobserver.com/146/v-print/story/439590.html
- Hui, T. Keung. “Wake opts for fewer year-rounds.” The News and Observer. May 17, 2006. Accessed at: http://www.newsobserver.com/146/story/440499.html